Wayfarers  in  Already 


Charles  Vince 


GIFT  OF 


F/h&h 


WAYFARERS  TN  ARCADY 


M 

i     WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 


BY 

CHARLES  VINCE 

AUTHOR    OF   "THE    STREET    OF    FACES" 


Happy  is  England !     I  could  be  content 
To  see  no  other  verdure  than  its  own. 

— Keats. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK   AND   LONDON 

TTbe  Knickerbocker  press 
1922 


Copyright,  1922 

by 
Charles  Vince 

Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


/EN 


zro 

MY  FELLOW  WAYFARER 

OF  THREE  THOUSAND 

MILES 


5242(59 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  ROAD        .......  3 

THE  Two  VALLEYS 5 

ON  COMING  TO  THE  DOWNS        .        .        .        -15 

THE  SEAFARER  OF  THE  DOWNS   ....  23 

THE  OLD  MAN  AND  DEATH         ....  33 

SHEPHERDS'  ROMANCE 39 

GREAT  ROADS 45 

THE  SCHOLAR  ROADMAKER         ....  53 

WARRIOR  TREES 59 

THE  ROAD  TO  DIDLING 63 

WINTER  WOODS 71 

THE  MAP 75 

THE  COUNTRY  BREAKFAST          .        .         .        .81 

THE  THUNDERSTORM 87 

THE  LITTLE  STREAM           .         .         .         •         •  95 

THE  EXILE 101 

SHEEP  ON  THE  DOWNS 107 

rviil 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

ROADS  OF  WAR          .         .         .         .         .         .115 

THE  SPRING  RIVER 121 

THE  COUNTRY  'Bus 127 

THE  ENCHANTED  FOREST 133 

THE  FISHERMEN  OF  AMBERLEY   .         .         .         .141 

THE  MAGICIAN  OF  THE  HILLS      .         .         .         .145 

THE  ADVENTURERS    .         .         .         .         .         .151 

THE  VILLAGE  AT  THE  WORLD'S  END     .         .         .157 
WINDOWS 163 


[  viii  ] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 


[i] 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

ROADS  OF  WAR          .         .         .         .         .  115 

THE  SPRING  RIVER 121 

THE  COUNTRY  'Bus 127 

THE  ENCHANTED  FOREST 133 

THE  FISHERMEN  OF  AMBERLEY   .         .         .         .141 

THE  MAGICIAN  OF  THE  HILLS      .         .         .         .145 

THE  ADVENTURERS    .         .         .         .         .         .151 

THE  VILLAGE  AT  THE  WORLD'S  END     .         .         .     157 
WINDOWS 163 


[  viii  ] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 


THE  ROAD 

WE  have  not  travelled  very  far, 
Nor  ever  have  we  gone 
To  where  the  great  adventures  are, 
Nor  Port  Desire  nor  Calabar 
Have  we  ever  looked  upon. 

We  go  by  the  ploughed  and  tranquil  field, 
By  the  woods  where  no  fears  hide. 
The  forges  are  silent  now  in  the  weald 
Where  a  man  no  more  has  need  of  a  shield 
Or  a  sword  upon  his  side. 

But  we  can  feel  the  galloping  wind 
The  quick  cold  strokes  of  the  rain. 
And  it  matters  not  that  we  must  find, 
Before  the  day  is  far  behind, 
A  road  to  the  London  train. 

For  the  sky  that  is  high  above  Helicon 
Is  as  high  above  Gomshall  Down, 
And  a  road  is  a  road  to  travel  on 
Or  whether  it  start  from  Babylon 
Or  out  of  Dorking  town. 


THE  TWO  VALLEYS 

OF  the  two  valleys  one  was  long  and  narrow, 
the  other  like  half  of  a  great  bowl ;  and  the 
second  valley,  since  it  looked  towards  the  north- 
east while  the  long  valley  looked  towards  the 
north-west,  was  the  first  to  be  filled  by  the  sun- 
light in  the  morning  and  by  the  shadows  in  the 
evening.  They  opened  into  the  same  field,  and 
other  fields  stretched  down  from  them  to  a  farm- 
house built  of  grey  stone  and  flints,  smooth  and 
black  as  ice,  with  a  ten-foot  hedge  of  box  round 
its  garden,  and  a  deep  square  porch  of  yew  at  its 
door. 

Since  they  were  valleys  in  the  chalk  hills  they 
were  of  a  beautiful  shape,  looking  as  though  they 
had  been  very  carefully  made  by  eyes  and  hands 
that  loved  true  and  pure  lines.  From  year's  end 
to  year's  end  their  turf  was  always  short  and 
green,  and  they  were  unadorned,  although  in 
summer  their  green  was  faintly  dusted  over  with 
the  red  gold  and  the  pale  gold  of  trefoil  and  rock 
roses. 

To  this  cottage  with  the  box  hedge  and  the  yew 
[51 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

porch  came  a  young  man,  tired  and  troubled,  and 
misanthropic.  He  may  have  been  unhappy  in 
love,  or  he  may  have  been  in  debt,  or  he  may 
have  eaten  and  drunk  too  much,  or,  more  prob- 
ably, since  he  had  come  to  such  a  place,  he  had 
worked  too  hard  and  slept  too  little.  When  he 
came  away  he  had  told  his  friends  that  he  was 
going  to  spread  his  mind  out  in  the  open  for  the 
wind  and  the  sun  to  freshen  it  again. 

At  the  door  he  was  received  by  the  farmer's 
wife,  a  figure  as  square  and  deep  as  the  porch 
itself,  and  led  upstairs  to  a  little  room  whose 
casement  window,  opening  under  the  thatch, 
looked  out  across  the  fields  to  the  two  valleys. 
The  passage  outside  was  hung  with  wedding 
groups  of  the  farmer's  family  and  of  the  royal 
family  in  democratic  neighbourliness,  and  in  the 
room  itself  was  one  picture,  so  dark  and  dim  that 
it  looked  as  if  it  had  been  smoked.  Peering  close 
the  young  man  could  see  a  very  large  silver  fish 
lying  in  the  foreground  of  what  might  have  been 
a  landscape  in  the  style  of  Poussin.  The  land- 
lady considered  it  to  have  been  sufficiently  de- 
scribed when  she  had  said  with  pride  that  it  was 
"a  painting  in  oils."  The  young  man  was  about 
to  make  a  joke  about  smoked  fish  and  fish  in  oil, 
but  reflecting  that  the  landlady  would  probably 

[6] 


THE  TWO  VALLEYS 

not  understand  it,  he  opened  the  window  instead, 
and  looked  out  across  the  fields  to  the  two  valleys. 
At  this  window,  with  its  broad  wooden  seat 
cut  in  the  thickness  of  the  wall,  he  was  content  to 
spend  his  days.  At  night  his  mind  still  worked, 
troubled  and  overstrained,  and  he  woke  out  of 
puzzled  uneasy  dreams  of  which  he  remembered 
only  that  he  had  been  trying  to  get  something  to 
come  right  and  always  it  went  wrong;  but  his 
days  were  like  long  sweet  sleep.  Kneeling  on 
that  wooden  seat  and  leaning  from  the  window, 
where  his  outstretched  hand  could  touch  the 
thatch  above  and  the  living  roof  of  the  old  yew 
porch  below,  he  let  his  mind  sink  into  idleness, 
luxuriously,  as  the  tired  body  will  sink  into  cool 
water.  He  sank  to  that  depth  where  the  mind  is 
back  again  in  its  first  childhood,  content  for 
hours  with  no  more  than  a  moving  thing.  So  he 
was  happy,  watching  the  smoke  of  his  pipe  as  it 
curled  up  into  the  thatch,  or  the  top  of  an  apple 
tree  as  it  moved  in  the  wind,  or  the  rain  as  it  fell 
through  the  still  summer  air,  or  the  shadow  of  the 
tall  box  hedge  at  evening  as  it  crept  across  the 
garden  like  a  tide.  And  if  there  were  neither 
rain  nor  shadow  nor  wind  to  watch,  then  he 
looked  across  the  fields  at  the  two  valleys,  and 
was  content  with  their  emptiness. 

[71 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

He  had  watched  them  for  a  long  time  before  he 
even  thought — so  idle  was  he — of  going  any 
nearer  to  them.  Then  one  day  he  walked  across 
the  fields  and  climbed  the  hill  in  which  they  lay, 
listening  to  the  pleasant  sound  of  the  grass  heads 
as  they  tapped  on  his  boots,  and  looking  at  the 
simple  and  pure  shape  of  the  two  valleys.  After 
that  he  left  his  window  under  the  thatch  and 
spent  his  days  lying  on  the  odorous  ages-old 
turf  of  the  chalk  which  is  more  restful  than  down 
and  all  the  "verdurous  glooms."  There,  through 
half-closed  eyes,  he  looked  out,  as  he  thought,  at 
nothing,  and  thanked  God  for  the  emptiness  of 
the  two  valleys,  where  none  came  and  nothing 
had  ever  happened. 

To  him,  drowsing  there,  sleep  and  waking  were 
almost  the  same,  for  each  was  a  great  peace,  born 
of  the  strength  and  gentleness  of  that  ancient  turf 
on  which  he  lay.  Time  was  not.  Nothing  in 
those  valleys  can  ever  have  been  other  than  it 
was.  There  was  nothing — nothing  as  he  looked 
round  them,  which  could  tell  him  whether  he  was 
in  the  present  or  the  past,  and  he  would  wake 
(this  was  after  he  had  listened  to  stories  in  the 
farm  kitchen)  wondering  in  what  century  he 
was,  and  look,  still  half  asleep,  for  the  deer  steal- 
ers  coming  across  the  hill  from  the  chase  beyond, 

[81 


THE  TWO  VALLEYS 

or  listen  for  the  sound  of  the  mallets  of  the  Nor- 
man stonemasons  building  the  church  in  the 
little  village  across  the  hill.  And  once  he  won- 
dered if  he  heard,  very  faintly,  the  cries  of  men 
and  women  on  the  curving  Down  behind  him  as 
they  watched  the  handfuls  of  the  ashes  of  their 
dead  laid  on  the  dry  chalk,  and  the  black  earthen 
pans  placed  over  them  and  the  great  barrows, 
less  ancient  only  than  the  hills,  heaped  above. 
So  he  dreamed  in  that  empty  place  until  one  day 
he  noticed  in  the  turf  a  track,  no  broader  than  a 
cart  wheel,  and  faintly  white  with  chalk.  He 
had  lain  close  by  it  for  a  long  time,  not  moving, 
and  wondering  what  it  could  be,  when  suddenly 
a  rabbit  dashed  down  it  from  behind  him  and  he 
saw  its  scut  go  over  the  valley's  rim  like  a  shoot- 
ing star. 

For  the  first  time,  he  wakened  to  the  living 
things  in  those  two  valleys.  He  would  lie  very 
still  to  watch  the  rabbits  travelling  up  and  down 
by  those  little  roads  that  their  feet  had  whitened, 
or  playing  tick  down  below,  or  coming  out  to  sit 
in  the  sunlight  as  the  shadow  began  to  creep  over 
the  valley's  rim.  As  his  eyes  opened,  the  empti- 
ness of  the  two  valleys,  for  which  he  had  blessed 
them,  began  to  fill  with  living  things.  He 
watched  each  day  for  a  flock  of  sheep  that  came 

[91 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

always  by  the  same  road — he  had  seen  them 
before,  unthinking  as  he  had  seen  the  flowers  or 
the  clouds — and  drifted  up  through  the  valleys, 
silent  as  the  blowing  rain.  He  would  listen  now 
for  the  shepherd's  voice  coming  across  to  him 
high  and  strange  as  the  call  of  a  bird,  and  watch 
for  his  dog  that  moved  among  the  sheep  like  a 
bird's  shadow  on  the  turf. 

Each  day  he  would  see  them  stop  in  their 
wandering  on  the  side  of  the  long  valley,  and  pour 
suddenly  down  into  it,  gathering  eagerly  round  a 
small  hut.  Then  they  would  drift  away  again, 
and  when  he  went  across  to  see  why  it  was  that 
they  gathered  there,  he  found  drinking  troughs 
round  the  hut  and  inside  it  a  well. 

It  was  then  that  he  saw  the  horseman.  He  too 
had  his  hour  each  day.  He  would  come,  riding 
slowly  across  the  fields  from  the  distant  farm, 
and  sit  on  a  trough  while  the  horse,  tramping 
round  and  round,  would  pump  the  water  up 
from  the  depths  below  the  chalk. 

Last  of  all  came  the  cows,  and  their  hour  was 
when  the  day  began  to  turn,  and  the  valleys 
seemed  to  ripen,  growing  golden  and  mellow  in 
the  sun;  and  the  rim  of  the  rounded  valley  was 
marked  with  a  foot  of  dark  shadow,  like  the 
painting  round  the  rim  of  a  bowl. 

[10] 


THE  TWO  VALLEYS 

The  cows  would  come  in  single  file  from  the 
fields — each  falling  into  place  as  the  file  went  by 
in  slow  procession  to  the  well.  It  was  like  a 
solemn  ceremony  at  the  close  of  day — the  pro- 
cession of  the  evensong  of  the  two  valleys.  So 
the  noiseless  coming  and  going  of  the  day  was 
ended,  and  the  rounded  valley  began  to  fill  with 
shadows. 

All  this  the  young  man  watched  and  was 
fascinated,  as  a  child  watches  the  turn  and  return 
of  the  wheel  of  a  watch.  Each  day  it  happened 
just  the  same.  The  creatures  came  and  went, 
unheeding  of  time  but  at  their  appointed  hours. 
They  came  also  by  their  own  paths  that  they  had 
made  themselves.  Those  empty  valleys  were 
more  full  of  roads  than  the  busiest  of  towns — 
roads  made  and  kept  by  the  continual  passing  of 
many  feet.  Their  floors  were  all  criss-crossed  by 
the  little  white  ways  of  the  rabbits.  Their  sides 
were  closely  ribbed  with  hundreds  of  earth  tracks 
studded  with  flints,  which  the  feet  of  the  sheep 
had  beaten  out  of  the  turf.  These  tracks  ran  all 
round  the  valleys  like  the  seats  in  an  immense 
amphitheatre,  so  clearly  and  evenly  were  they 
made;  and  twisting  leisurely  across  the  fields  was 
the  broader  highway  of  earth,  worn  out  of  the 
turf,  by  which  the  cows  came  to  drink. 

[n] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

Watching  these  roads,  and  wondering  how 
much  older  they  must  be  than  the  streets  of  the 
towns  that  he  knew,  watching  them  and  the 
creatures  that  came  by  them,  regular  as  the  sun, 
in  their  uncrowded,  unhurrying  life,  the  young 
man  forgot  that  desire  for  escape  and  for  loneli- 
ness with  which  he  had  come,  and  was  happy 
again  with  the  present  and  the  companionship 
of  living  things. 

On  his  last  day  he  sat  above  the  rounded  valley 
until  he  saw  the  horseman  appear  across  the 
fields.  Then  he  walked  down  to  the  well  and 
when  the  horseman  came  asked  that  he  might  be 
allowed  to  pump  up  the  water  that  day.  At  this 
the  horseman  neither  smiled  nor  looked  surprised 
but  nodded  and  sat  his  horse,  while  the  young 
man  laid  his  strength  against  the  long  pole.  He 
pushed  it  round,  slowly  and  laboriously,  and  did 
not  stop  until  he  heard  the  first  of  the  water  be- 
gin to  flow  into  the  troughs.  Then,  as  the  horse 
was  fastened  to  the  pole  to  finish  the  work,  he 
climbed  the  valley's  side,  and  taking  one  of  the 
hundreds  of  little  sheep  paths,  and  treading  care- 
fully in  its  narrow  way,  he  went  by  it  right  round 
the  two  valleys  and  the  curve  of  hillside  which 
separated  them,  until  he  came  to  a  rabbit  track, 
and  following  this  went  up  over  the  valley's  rim 

[12] 


THE  TWO  VALLEYS 

to  the  place  where  he  used  to  sit.  All  this  he  did 
as  a  man  performing  a  ceremony,  and  then, 
feeling  that  by  this  act  he  had  made  himself  a 
part  of  the  valley's  life,  since  he  had  shared  for  a 
moment  in  its  toil,  he  went  back  by  his  accus- 
tomed way  to  the  farmhouse,  where  his  bag 
stood,  ready  packed,  under  the  great  porch  of 
yew. 


[13] 


ON  COMING  TO  THE  DOWNS 

VERY  time  that  a  man  who  loves  the  hills 
returns  to  them,  he  feels  as  if,  for  him,  a 
miracle  had  been  performed.  Far  away  he  has 
seen  a  strange  look  in  the  high  clouds,  and  then, 
suddenly,  he  has  known  that  the  hills  were  there ; 
but  just  when  that  change  came  and  how  he  first 
knew  the  hills  from  the  clouds  he  can  never  be 
sure.  In  this  way,  for  every  traveller  who  returns 
to  them,  the  hills  are  made  afresh  out  of  the  sky. 
In  whatever  way  he  may  come,  there  will  always 
be  that  mysterious  moment  of  their  change,  or, 
as  it  more  truly  seems  to  him,  of  their  birth. 

But  you  do  not  come  to  the  South  Downs  as 
you  come  to  other  hills.  They  do  not  grow  out  of 
the  clouds,  but  rise  up  before  you  above  the 
curve  of  the  world.  And  yet,  although  they  are 
always  part  of  this  earth,  they  are  more  distant, 
mysterious,  and  aloof  than  any  of  the  other  hills. 
They  have  no  high  peaks,  nor  fantastic  shapes. 
They  have  nothing  but  their  long  unwavering 
line  standing  against  the  sky,  like  the  unattain- 

[15] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

able  horizon  of  the  sea.  It  is  this  that  makes 
them  more  remote  than  all  the  hills,  and  you 
draw  near  to  them  wondering  always  what  it 
can  be  that  lies  beyond.  They  stand,  as  some- 
times the  sea  stands,  like  a  great  green  wall  of 
the  Gods  built  to  keep  men  from  things  too  good 
for  them  to  find,  and  the  little  chalk  roads  that 
go  up  them  are  like  tall  and  slender  ladders,  from 
which  a  man,  if  he  ever  climbed  them,  would  step 
straight  into  the  sky. 

In  another  thing  also  the  Downs  are  different 
from  the  hills.  They  do  not  change.  For  the 
unchanging  hills  do,  indeed,  change  continually. 
You  have  seen  them  in  the  sunshine  looking  small 
and  dusty  and  far  away;  and  after  rain,  tall  and 
black  and  very  near.  You  have  seen  them  tower- 
ing, awesome  and  beautiful,  against  a  clear  even- 
ing sky,  and  the  next  day  dim  with  wrack  and 
dwarfed  by  the  great  moving  mountains  of  the 
clouds  that  roll  above  them.  For  the  faces  and 
the  very  stature  of  the  hills  change  and  change 
again  with  the  changes  of  the  sky.  But  the 
Downs  do  not  change.  There  is  something  in 
their  pure  and  beautiful  shape  which  is  stronger 
than  any  storms  and  than  all  the  moods  of  the 
sky.  Night  and  the  clouds  alike  rest  very  gently 
on  them.  They  have  a  sweetness  and  gravity  of 

[16] 


ON  COMING  TO  THE  DOWNS 

their  own  which  Nature  herself  cannot  alter. 
The  skies  and  the  seas,  the  trees  and  the  hills — 
all  these  she  can  make  to  reflect  all  her  moods. 
But  however  her  face  may  change  above  the 
Downs  they  remain  always  the  same.  They  do 
indeed  respond  to  those  two  needs  which  a  man 
feels  more  and  more  strongly  the  older  he  grows. 
They  are  simple  and  they  are  sure. 

In  his  description  of  Egdon  Moor  Mr.  Hardy 
speaks  of  a  change  in  the  human  mind  towards 
Nature.  He  believes  that  it  grows  darker  in 
itself,  and,  seeking  always  for  sympathy  in  Na- 
ture to  its  own  moods,  that  it  turns  more  and 
more  towards  what  is  most  sombre  and  most 
bleak  in  her.  He  believes  that  in  the  end  we  shall 
have  grown  as  indifferent  to  the  groves  and  the 

valleys,  to 

Daffodils 

With  the  green  world  they  live  in;  and  clear  rills 
That  for  themselves  a  cooling  covert  make, 
'Gainst  the  hot  season,  the  mid-forest  brake 
Rich  with  a  sprinkling  of  fair  musk-rose  blooms, 

— as  indifferent  to  these  as  were  the  earlier 
generations  to  the  beauty  of  the  hills.  But  that 
time  will  never  come  so  long  as  there  are  men  who 
try,  in  whatever  way  is  given  them,  to  praise  the 
Sussex  Downs.  No  man  could  love  them  and  not 
keep  in  himself  some  sweetness  and  sanity  and  a 

[17] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

belief  in  gracious  things.  In  them  these  antagon- 
isms, that  elsewhere  divide  the  world,  have  no 
existence.  One  cannot  understand,  when  among 
them,  why  some  men  should  love  the  valleys 
and  some  the  hills,  for  on  their  heights  the  valleys 
and  the  hills  meet.  There  are  no  sheltered  and 
tended  gardens  in  all  England  where  the  flowers 
bloom  as  they  bloom  on  this  open  turf,  fed  by 
the  south-west  wind  and  the  salt  sea-mists.  They 
are  sown  as  close  with  the  pale  rock-roses  as  is 
the  sky  with  stars,  and  their  poppy  fields  are  like 
flame  and  their  great  gorse  slopes  like  golden  light 
across  the  miles.  And  where  these  flowers  bloom, 
and  where  the  plough  turns  the  earth  and  the 
corn  is  sown,  and  the  road  runs  and  the  sheep 
feed,  among  all  these  things  that  belong  to  the 
quiet  and  sheltered  places  of  the  earth,  there  is 
also  such  a  sense  of  spacious  emptiness,  inhab- 
ited only  by  the  light  and  the  wind,  as  one  will 
not  find  on  the  highest  hills,  but  only  in  the 
sky. 

Here  too  in  that  mysterious  time  between  day 
and  night  other  things  meet  also  which  elsewhere 
must  always  be  divided.  In  that  waning  light 
one  may  wonder  whether  they  are  indeed  of  the 
earth,  and  do  not  belong  also  to  the  sea  and  the 
sky ;  for  all  that  is  beautiful  and  serene  in  all  three 

[18] 


ON  COMING  TO  THE  DOWNS 

seems  to  meet  and  be  made  permanent  in  the 
Downs,  the  expanse  of  the  sea,  and  the  gra- 
cious shapes  of  the  earth,  and  the  purity  of  the 
sky. 

I  could  believe  that  the  Downs  were  made  after 
the  sky,  in  the  early  morning  of  the  third  day  of 
the  world,  and  are  a  little  older  than  all  the  rest  of 
the  earth.  When  the  waters  were  divided  and 
the  sky  made  between,  a  strange  sea  hung  be- 
neath, and  when  the  waters  were  gathered  into 
one  place  that  the  dry  land  might  appear,  this 
sea  was  changed  suddenly  into  land  and  its 
waves  were  caught  and  changed  to  earth  before 
they  could  break.  But  even  now  it  half  belongs 
to  the  sky  and  the  sea,  and  some  day  its  great 
serene  spaces  will  be  lifted  to  the  sky  again,  and 
its  crested  slopes  of  turf  will  break  into  water, 
and  its  white  stones  turn  to  foam. 

This  sense  of  strange  things  meeting  there, 
which  everywhere  else  are  kept  apart,  haunts  all 
the  verse  that  men  have  written  about  the 
Downs ;  but  no  one  yet  has  found  the  words  to 
say  what  it  is.  One  poet  tried  when  he  said  very 
bluntly  of  them  that  they  were 

Half  wild  and  wholly  tame, 

and  another  when  he  wrote, — 

[19] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

Together  stand 

Tillage  and  pasture  and  dim  fairyland, 

and  yet  another  when  he  wrote,— 

They  are  a  wonderland,  where  shapes  well-known, 
Hayrick  or  homestead,  bush  or  tree-top,  seen 
Far  off,  take  forms  of  faerie  not  their  own. 

But  no  one  has  ever  said  what  it  really  is,  or 
indeed  come  nearer  to  saying  it  than  a  broad 
rough  gesture,  which  is  all  that  those  words  are. 
Indeed  the  wisest  poet  was  he  who  did  not 
attempt  to  say  more  than  could  be  said  in  very 
plain  and  simple  words,  and  who  wrote, — 

And  along  the  sky  the  line  of  the  Downs 
So  noble  and  so  bare. 

For  it  is  so  that  you  remember  them,  as  some- 
thing single,  and  complete,  and  very  clear.  It  is 
because  they  have  this  simplicity,  and  their 
changeless  look,  and  that  far,  remote  line  of  their 
summit  like  the  horizon  against  the  sky,  that 
they  stand  apart  from  all  other  hills  and  seem 
more  steadfast  than  them  all.  Whatever  else  of 
beauty  and  mystery  you  have  found  in  them,  you 
see  them  always  in  your  mind  as  you  saw  them 
when  you  first  came  to  them,  rising  in  their  long 
green  rampart  from  the  weald,  and  shutting 
away  behind  them  many  things.  For  the  mys- 

[20] 


ON  COMING  TO  THE  DOWNS 

tery  of  the  hills  as  you  come  to  them,  watching 
them  take  birth  from  the  clouds,  is  the  mystery 
of  what  they  are ;  but  the  mystery  of  the  Downs 
is  the  mystery  of  what  they  hide. 


THE  SEAFARER  OF  THE  DOWNS 

I  MET  the  Sea  Captain  for  the  first  time  one 
evening  after  a  day  of  storm  when  the  wind 
was  blowing  down  the  gap  and  out  to  sea.  The 
water  in  the  last  grey  reaches  of  the  river  was 
ruffled  and  broken  between  the  wind  and  the 
incoming  tide,  and  on  the  cliffs,  on  either  side  of 
the  gap,  you  could  hear,  if  you  lay  close  in  the 
turf,  the  cheerful  song  that  the  wind  made, 
blowing  through  the  fine  grasses,  and  watch  the 
seagulls  as  they  rose  from  the  crumbling  cliff 
edge  and  were  carried  away  like  spindrift  from 
a  wave. 

The  path  to  the  top  of  the  headland  went 
upwards  through  a  valley  behind  the  crest  of  the 
cliffs,  and  was  so  smooth  and  so  green  that  it  was 
like  a  great  hollow  of  water  between  two  waves. 
It  was  empty  except  for  a  clump  of  bugloss  turn- 
ing wine  dark  in  the  late  summer,  and  the  chalk 
stones,  like  patches  of  foam,  all  up  the  valley 
marking  the  path. 

A  little  way  up  I  could  see  what  looked  like  a 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

much  larger  stone  than  any  of  the  rest,  but  when 
I  came  to  it  I  found  a  sheep  lying  on  its  back.  It 
was  lying  very  still,  and  its  four  legs  were  stick- 
ing straight  up  into  the  air  so  that  it  looked  like  a 
great  wooden  toy  of  a  sheep,  and  no  one  would 
have  been  surprised  to  see  a  little  wheel  at  the 
end  of  each  of  its  feet. 

As  I  stood  by  it  I  saw  a  man  coming  down  from 
the  headland.  He  wore  a  big  cloak,  and  I 
thought  it  must  be  the  shepherd,  although  he 
carried  no  crook  and  he  did  not  walk  as  the  shep- 
herds do.  I  waited,  and  together  we  helped  the 
sheep  to  its  feet  again.  Then  I  looked  at  him. 
It  was  a  shepherd's  cloak  that  he  had,  and  above 
it  a  sailor's  sou'-wester.  The  two  together,  at 
first  sight,  gave  him  a  comical  air,  but  this  one 
forgot  when  one  knew  him,  and  now  I  feel  that 
this  mixed  dress,  which  he  wore  in  all  seasons, 
was  exactly  right  for  that  strange,  pathetic 
man. 

He  told  me  the  best  way  to  help  up  sheep  who 
have  rolled  on  their  backs,  and  talked  of  the 
staggers,  and  then  he  looked  through  the  end  of 
the  valley  out  to  sea.  A  steamer  was  on  her  way 
across  to  France,  with  her  smoke  rolling  far  ahead 
over  the  waters  before  that  dancing  north  wind. 
Far  beyond  the  smoke  we  could  see  a  great  sailing 


THE  SEAFARER  OF  THE  DOWNS 

ship  going  down  Channel  along  the  distant  road 
of  the  horizon,  and  nearer  at  hand  was  a  smaller 
ship  making  up  the  coast.  The  man  looked  at  her 
for  some  time  and  said,  in  a  changed,  sharp  voice, 
that  she  was  carrying  too  much  sail. 

I  turned  then  to  leave  him,  looking  up  at  the 
great  curve  of  turf  above  us  which,  in  that  amber- 
coloured  evening  light  after  the  rain,  had  become 
a  deeper  and  almost  lucent  green. 

"It's  like  a  wave,"  I  said. 

"It's  like  a  wave,"  he  repeated.  "It  hasn't 
started  to  break  yet — but  perhaps  one  day  it 
will." 

These  were  our  last  words.  He  went  down  the 
valley,  and  I  went  up  and  over  the  headland, 
thinking  of  this  odd  man,  and  the  sudden  change 
in  his  voice  when  he  spoke  of  the  ship,  and  then 
the  note  that  was  almost  fear,  when  he  said  of 
that  great  wave  of  turf  that  some  day  it  might 
break. 

Everyone  in  the  village  called  him  the  Sea 
Captain,  and  told  me  of  his  cleverness  with 
animals  and  especially  with  sheep,  which  was  well 
known,  so  that  the  shepherds  themselves  would 
seek  his  advice.  But  when  I  asked  of  his  adven- 
tures at  sea  they  said  no  more  than  that  he  was 
the  Sea  Captain. 

1*5] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

I  wondered  what  tales  he  would  tell  of  the  sea, 
but  he  told  none.  And  yet  the  sea  was  always 
coming  into  his  talk,  and  seemed  never  out  of  his 
mind.  He  told  me  no  tales — and  then,  one  night, 
as  we  went  down  towards  the  sea  by  a  road,  all 
roofed  and  dark  with  trees,  that  once  upon  a 
time  the  smugglers  used,  he  told  me  of  a  storm 
when  one  of  the  hands  fell  from  aloft,  crashing 
with  his  face  on  the  deck,  and  was  picked  up  with 
his  jaw  broken,  and  hanging  horribly  loose  on  his 
throat.  Perhaps  it  was  the  night  and  that  dark 
road,  and  the  sound  of  the  sea  on  the  shingle  as 
we  came  near  it,  like  mournful  fingers  raking 
among  the  stones  for  something  that  they  had 
lost — perhaps  it  was  these  which  gave  to  the 
tale  a  moving  and  terrible  reality,  as  he  described 
the  look  of  horror  in  the  man's  eyes,  and  the 
awful  noises  that  he  made  out  of  his  hanging 
mouth,  like  a  sheep  in  pain.  That  was  his  only 
tale,  but  it  was  like  all  his  talk  of  the  sea,  through 
which  there  seemed  to  run,  in  spite  of  him, 
an  odd  current  of  fear. 

What  the  fear  was  I  could  not  tell,  but  I  came 
very  soon  to  the  conclusion  that  he  must  have 
left  the  sea  for  some  fault  of  his  own,  and  that 
this  had  made  bitter  all  his  memories. 

It  was  only  when  his  talk  of  the  sea  mixed 
[26] 


THE  SEAFARER  OF  THE  DOWNS 

with  his  talk  of  the  land  that  it  lost  all  fear.  He 
talked  as  a  lover  of  the  Downs,  with  a  love  of  the 
sea  running  through  it  all.  He  talked  of  them 
when  the  grey  showers  blew  across  them,  and 
they  themselves  were  like  a  rolling  swell  after  a 
storm  and  of  their  great,  grey  untroubled  empti- 
ness in  the  evening  like  a  sea  where  no  ship 
came,  when  one  walked  by  the  little  white  stones 
that  marked  the  path,  and  looked  out  to  the 
Channel  for  the  friendly  lights  of  the  fishing  fleet, 
gathered  together  like  the  lights  of  a  town. 

He  talked  of  the  trees  that  filled  the  gap, 
shutting  off  his  village  from  the  sea,  and  of  the 
trees  round  his  home  when  he  was  a  boy — he  had 
come  from  inland ;  and  he  would  tell  how  he  had 
listened  to  them  at  night,  pretending  that  the 
wind  in  them  was  the  sound  of  the  sea,  and  won- 
dering when  the  call  would  come  for  him  to  go 
on  deck.  "And  now  when  I  hear  it,"  he  said, 
"I  listen  differently.  I  seem  to  hear  it  come 
howling  over  the  awful  empty  sea,  and  then  the 
wind  falls  a  little  and  the  emptiness  all  fills  with 
the  sound  of  the  leaves." 

In  this  way  he  talked,  this  man  whom  some- 
thing at  sea  troubled,  so  that  at  times  he  seemed 
to  fear  it  like  a  child ;  but  whether  or  not  he  woul  d 
have  been  happy  if  he  had  left  it  altogether 

[27] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

going  back  to  his  own  inland  country,  I  could  not 
be  sure. 

One  day  the  news  came  that  he  was  dead,  and 
that  if  I  would  go  down  to  his  cottage  there  were 
messages  which  he  had  left  for  me.  I  went,  and 
found  that  he  had  been  ill  only  two  days.  Before 
he  died  he  had  said  that  he  left  his  sea  books  to 
me,  begging  that  I  would  have  "Sea  Captain" 
put  on  his  tomb. 

There  were  only  three  or  four  books  in  his 
cottage,  and  they  stood  on  a  shelf  in  the  kitchen 
with  the  candlesticks.  I  lifted  them  down, 
expecting  to  find  his  Nautical  Almanack  and 
Sailing  Directions  and  his  List  of  Lights  and 
Tide  Tables.  Instead,  to  my  surprise,  I  found 
that  they  were  all  volumes  of  Marryat,  much 
mended  and  soiled,  and  their  woodcuts  col- 
oured roughly  with  chalk — the  tales  of  the  sea 
that  boys  read  fifty  years  ago.  And  that  was 
all. 

With  the  books  in  my  hands,  and  a  first  under- 
standing of  the  mystery  of  the  Sea  Captain  in 
my  mind,  I  went  up  to  the  Vicarage.  There  I 
found  a  woman  with  the  Vicar,  "the  Captain's 
sister,"  he  said,  and  added  "not  that  he  was  a 
Captain  at  all." 

"Nor  had  ever  been  to  sea" — the  woman  spoke 
[28] 


THE  SEAFARER  OF  THE  DOWNS 

as  if  she  were  ashamed,  "though  he  was  always 
romancing  about  it." 

I  put  the  books  down  on  the  table  before  her. 
She  looked  at  them  and  went  on. 

"And  he  was  mad  to  go  to  sea  until — "  she 
broke  off,  "and  then  he  gave  it  up.  But  even 
then  he  said  that  he  must  be  near  the  sea.  I've 
hardly  seen  him  for  forty  years.  He  might  have 
had  the  farm — a  good  farm,  and  we're  well  to 
do" — she  looked  at  us  a  little  defiantly — "but  he 
would  come  to  the  sea." 

I  said  nothing,  for  I  was  looking  at  the  books 
and  wondering.  It  might  be  in  one  of  them,  but 
I  doubted  it. 

"Did  he  ever  tell  you,"  I  looked  at  the  Vicar, 
"the  tale  of  a  storm  when  a  man  fell  on  deck  and 
broke  his  jaw?" 

The  Vicar  shook  his  head,  but  the  woman  gave 
a  start. 

"Broke  his  jaw?"  she  said. 

"Yes,"  said  I ;  "so  that  it  was  hanging  horribly 
down,  and  he  was  moaning  like  a  sheep." 

"And  he  said  that  that  happened  on  a 
ship?"  She  spoke  almost  with  awe.  "To  think 
that  he  remembered  it  at  all!  He  can't  have 
been  more  than  ten  at  the  time.  It  was  one  of 
our  farm  hands.  He  fell  off  the  roof  of  the 

[29] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

barn.  To  think  that  he  said  it  happened  on  a 
ship!" 

"I  am  afraid  it  must  have  been  deliberate 
deceit/'  The  Vicar  was  evidently  pained — but 
then  he  had  not  heard  the  tale. 

I  said  nothing,  remembering  how  the  Sea 
Captain  had  told  it  on  that  dark  road  under  the 
trees,  to  the  sound  of  the  mournful  sea,  as  it 
crept  and  whispered  among  the  stones. 

When  the  sister  went  away  she  took  with  her 
such  things  as  the  Sea  Captain  had  left,  but  the 
books  she  said  that  I  might  keep.  There  were 
many  things  that  she  had  not  said,  and  that  we 
had  not  liked  to  ask.  Others  had  asked  them,  for 
the  day  after  she  had  gone  the  village  was  full  of 
vague  tales.  Yet  she  can  have  answered  little  or 
nothing.  The  tales  were  too  vague.  All  we  knew 
was  that  something  had  changed  the  Sea  Captain 
when  he  was  still  a  boy,  turning  his  delight  at  the 
sea  to  fear,  so  that  the  sea  had  haunted  him  all  his 
life,  chaining  him  to  her  yet  always  repulsing 
him. 

After  his  burial  the  village  was  bitterly  di- 
vided. Some  would  have  had  "Sea  Captain" 
put  on  his  tombstone,  as  he  had  desired.  The 
others  held  that  to  set  up  such  a  lie  on  holy 
ground  would  be  blasphemy.  It  was  useless  to 

[30]  " 


THE  SEAFARER  OF  THE  DOWNS 

argue  that  the  very  last  man  laid  in  that  church- 
yard, though  he  had  been  a  lazy  drunkard, 
neglecting  his  wife  and  indifferent  to  his  children, 
yet  was  described  on  his  grave  as  a  tender  hus- 
band and  devoted  father.  It  was  useless  to 
argue,  for  the  Vicar  was  on  the  side  of  those  who 
were  for  the  exact  truth. 

But  if  the  Sea  Captain's  spirit  shall  ever  visit 
that  place  again,  may  he  be  satisfied  to  find, 
beneath  his  name  and  the  date  of  his  death, 

This  soul  hath  been 
Alone,  on  a  wide,  wide  sea. 


THE  OLD  MAN  AND  DEATH 

ONE  summer  day,  during  the  War,  I  walked 
through  a  Sussex  village  under  the  Downs, 
a  village  so  undisturbed  and  serene  that  it 
seemed  as  if  the  hot  breath  of  War  can  never 
have  blown  that  way.  I  walked  through  it, 
counting  the  coloured  cards  in  the  cottage  win- 
dows with  the  names  of  those  who  had  gone  to 
the  War ;  and  I  wondered  if  there  were  any  people 
left  in  it,  for  the  place  was  so  still  and  empty,  and 
so  many  had  gone. 

The  wind  was  in  the  east,  and,  very  faintly,  it 
brought  the  sound  of  guns  from  the  Flemish 
coast.  There  in  the  weald,  the  sound  did  not 
seem  to  come  out  of  the  air  at  all,  but  from 
beneath  the  Downs.  It  was  like  a  murmur  deep 
within  the  earth,  as  if  the  dead,  lying  under  their 
barrows  and  the  trenches  of  their  ancient  camps, 
had  turned  and  muttered  in  their  sleep. 

I  followed  the  road  through  the  village,  and  up 
the  hill  behind  it,  and  sitting  there  at  the  top 
looked  back  across  the  quiet  roofs  to  the  Downs. 

[33] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

Then  I  saw  that  an  old  man  had  been  climbing 
the  hill  behind  me.  He  stopped  two  yards  away 
and  bent  down.  A  rabbit  lay  on  the  road  close 
under  the  edge  of  the  grass ;  it  had  been  killed 
and  ripped  open  by  a  stoat.  The  old  man  picked 
it  up  and  parting  the  grasses  at  the  hedge  roots 
slipped  it  in  among  them.  He  looked  up  and  saw 
me  watching  him. 

"It'll  be  very  well  there,"  he  said.  "If  I 
was  a  rabbit  I'd  rather  lie  there  and  feed  that 
rose  than  at  the  bottom  of  one  of  their  profitless 
sand-holes.  But  they  will  go  to  their  holes  if 
they  can." 

He  sat  down  near  me  and  filled  a  pipe  so  that 
I  had  time  to  look  at  his  face,  a  cheerful,  strong 
face,  well  browned  and  wrinkled  with  the 
weather,  a  face,  you  could  see,  that  took  pleasure 
in  feeling  the  wind  and  the  rain. 

"There's  a  woman  down  there,"  he  went  on 
"  (you  could  see  her  chimney  if  it  wasn't  for  the 
church  spire)  who  has  just  lost  her  son.  I  went  in 
last  night  to  say  a  word  or  two.  'Ah,'  she  said 
to  me, '  if  only  I  had  him  here  and  could  put  him 
in  the  churchyard,  where  his  father  is,  and  know 
he  was  safe  there,  I'd  be  comforted.  It's  not 
knowing  where  he  lies  that's  hard.'  'What 
matter?'  said  I;  'so  long  as  there's  good  earth 

[341 


THE  OLD  MAN  AND  DEATH 

round  him  he'll  be  easy.  I've  seen  life  and  death 
in  these  fields  and  woods  enough  years  now  to 
know  as  it  don't  matter  very  much  where  you  lie 
so  long  as  you're  in  good  earth.'  But  there  was 
no  comfort  in  it  to  her.  She  would  ha'  been 
happier  if  she  had  seen  him  brought  home  to  the 
churchyard.  It's  that  that  hurts  them  all." 

The  old  man  puffed  at  his  pipe  for  a  while. 
"That's  not  my  way  of  thinking,"  he  said,  and 
pointed  down  the  hill.  "There's  my  cottage, 
with  the  bent  chimney  and  the  honeysuckle 
round  it.  It's  just  flowering  again.  From  the 
door  you  can  see  up  this  hill.  The  station  is  over 
the  other  side  behind  us. 

"  It's  three  years  and  more  now  since  my  son 
went  up  this  hill.  He  didn't  say  much,  but  we 
knew  why  he  was  going.  When  he  came  back  he 
was  a  soldier.  He  came  and  went  more  than 
once.  We  never  knew  when  he  was  coming. 
The  last  time  he  came  from  France.  One  night 
very  late — it  must  ha'  been  long  after  ten — he 
knocked  us  up.  There  he  was,  loaded  like  a  ped- 
lar, and  as  muddy  as  if  he  had  just  come  from 
the  plough.  When  he  went  away  it  made  the 
sixth  time  that  I  had  watched  him  up  this  hill. 
It's  just  where  we  are  now  that  he  would  turn 
and  wave  at  us." 

[35] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

The  old  man  looked  at  me,  and  neither  in  his 
eyes  or  voice  was  any  sadness.  He  spoke 
gravely;  that  was  all. 

"His  mother  is  like  the  rest,"  he  said;  "she 
misses  it  that  she  didn't  see  him  at  the  end  lying 
on  the  bed  where  he  was  born.  She  misses  the 
comfort  of  his  grave  to  grieve  over.  But  I  like  it 
better  as  it  is.  I  feel  the  sudden  end  of  it  less. 
He  just  went  away. 

"  When  he  comes  into  the  talk  I  don't  hush  my 
voice  and  stop.  I  talk  of  him  just  the  same  as 
before,  and  tell  the  tales  that  he  used  to  tell  when 
he  came  home,  and  laugh  over  them. 

"  It  shocks  some  of  them.  They  think  I've  no 
heart  because  they  don't  see  me  grieve.  But 
there's  no  comfort  to  me  in  grieving,  as  there  is 
to  some.  He  just  went  away  as  he  had  gone 
before,  and  I  like  to  think  that  he  can  still  come 
back. 

"The  Vicar  says  I  should  be  comforted,  re- 
membering that  he  did  his  duty  and  that  now 
he's  in  heaven.  But  /  say  that  I'd  rather  think 
that  he's  still  somewhere  on  earth,  and  that  one 
day  yet  he'll  come  walking  over  this  hill  again." 

The  old  man  looked  at  me  and  smiled.  Then 
he  got  to  his  feet,  and  I  with  him;  and  we  walked 
together  just  across  the  crest  of  the  hill.  Away 

[36] 


THE  OLD  MAN  AND  DEATH 

below  it  the  white  smoke  of  a  train  was  moving 
above  the  hedges,  and  when  it  stopped  I  could 
see  the  red  station  among  the  trees.  We  watched 
long  after  the  train  had  gone,  for  we  could  see  the 
little  dark  figures  of  people  come  out  of  the  sta- 
tion and  move  along  a  few  yards  of  white  road 
before  the  hedges  hid  them.  We  watched  until 
they  had  all  disappeared,  until  it  was  certain 
that  there  were  no  more  to  come.  Then,  very 
slowly,  the  old  man  knocked  out  his  pipe  in  the 
palm  of  his  hand,  and  turning,  went  back  down 
the  hill. 


[37] 


SHEPHERDS'  ROMANCE 

I  heard  a  mess  of  merry  Shepherds  Sing 

A  joyful  song  full  of  sweet  delight.  » 

QHEPHERDS  changed  when  they  laid  aside 
^  their  pipes.  Neither  Theocritus  nor  the 
writers  of  the  Mediaeval  and  Elizabethan  Carols 
would  have  understood  Professor  Jacks's  Mad 
Shepherds.  To  them  the  shepherds  were  the 
merriest  of  men,  but  to  us,  now  that  they  have 
ceased  to  sing,  they  are  of  all  men  the  most 
mysterious.  We  wonder  how  they  fill  their 
silences.  As  they  stand  along  the  edges  of  the 
hills,  bent  a  little  over  their  crooks,  they  are  like 
great  solitary  birds.  Nor  do  they  even  walk 
like  other  men.  They  walk  as  if  they  were  meant 
always  to  be  still,  like  statues  just  come  to  life 
and  moving  for  the  first  time  their  joints  of  stone, 
or  like  trees  feeling  their  way  with  their  great 
roots.  Do  they  wait  like  animals  in  vacant  con- 
tent? Or  do  they  dream?  Of  this  world,  at 
least,  they  know  things  that  we  cannot.  Per- 
haps they  are  the  richer  men  for  having  now  no 

[391 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

pipes  to  play,  and  for  standing  in  silence  all  day 
on  the  hills. 

But  this  shepherd,  had  he  lived  in  the  piping 
times,  had  piped  as  merrily  as  any  of  them. 

He  had  on  him  his  tabard  and  his  hat, 
His  tar  box,  his  pipe  and  his  flagat; 
His  name  was  called  jolly,  jolly  Wat. 

He  too,  had  he  lived  in  other  times,  had  been  a 
jolly,  jolly  Wat. 

He  was  a  small  man  and,  although  it  was  a 
warm  summer  day,  he  wore  a  massive  overcoat 
that  almost  touched  the  ground.  He  stooped  a 
little,  and  it  seemed  as  if  his  shoulders  bent 
beneath  its  weight.  He  had  a  plain,  gentle,  and 
wooden  face  that  did  not  change.  But  his  eyes, 
which  were  a  very  pale  clear  blue,  were  alive  as 
he  talked,  and  by  them  one  knew  when  he  was 
laughing.  He  had  also  two  small  tobacco  pipes, 
— very  small  for  a  man  to  smoke  in  the  open 
air.  They  were  both  old  and  black,  one  of  clay 
and  one  of  briar,  and  he  filled  and  smoked  them 
alternately. 

He  talked  like  other  men,  boasting  in  a  gentle 
and  charming  way  of  his  possessions  and  the 
things  that  he  did.  He  talked  of  his  great  coat 
which  he  had  bought  marvellously  cheap  and 

[40] 


SHEPHERDS'  ROMANCE 

which  no  rain  could  penetrate.  He  told  us  how 
he  had  painted  it  with  rubber  and,  pegging  it  out 
one  night,  had  filled  it  with  water;  yet  in  the 
morning  it  was  dry  as  a  rush  beneath.  He  talked 
of  his  employers,  telling  us  how  they  were  wrong 
about  the  sheep  and  he  was  right,  and  of  the  dogs 
he  had  bred  and  the  marvellous  things  that  they 
did,  and  of  his  sheep,  and  an  illness  that  they  had 
had,  wasting  away,  as  he  said,  like  butter  against 
the  sun.  So  he  talked  with  his  gentle  wooden 
face,  in  the  same  way  that  other  men  talk  of 
themselves  when  they  love  their  work,  except 
that  he  spoke  without  vain  glory  and  without 
bitterness  even  towards  his  employers  and  their 
mistakes.  In  all  he  said  there  was  the  sweetness 
of  the  open  air.  He  talked ;  but  we  had  not  yet 
touched  on  the  thing  that  piped  in  his  soul. 

We  made  ready  to  leave  him,  pointing  out  our 
way  along  the  Downs  to  a  distant  hill  where 
stood  a  solitary  and  withered  thorn  which  was 
called  "the  Scrag."  In  reply  he  asked  us  (filling 
this  time  the  briar)  if  we  knew  Cunning  Dick's 
hole,  which,  not  long  since,  had  been  discovered 
in  the  side  of  the  hill  with  the  table  and  chair  still 
in  it  that  Dick  had  used.  And  when  we  asked 
him  who  was  Dick  his  eyes  showed  his  surprise, 
and  he  answered  that  it  was  Dick  Turpin,  who 

[41] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

had  worked  in  those  parts.  Then  he  turned  and 
pointed  across  to  the  next  ridge  of  the  Downs 
where  once  the  main  road  had  run  along  the 
summit — a  road  still  broad  and  level  but  now 
green  with  turf.  He  pointed  to  a  wood,  and, 
speaking  as  a  man  speaks  who  had  made  great 
discoveries,  he  said  that  he  knew,  over  there  in 
that  wood,  of  another  of  Cunning  Dick's  holes. 
The  hole  itself  he  had  never  been  able  to  find, 
but  his  brother  one  day  had  seen,  stuck  in  the 
trunk  of  a  tree,  the  staple  to  which  Dick  must 
have  tied  his  horse;  and  he  himself  had  drawn 
that  staple  out.  He  had  it  still.  And  then  .  .  . 
"I've  read  two  hundred  of  Cunning  Dick's 
books,"  he  said. 

We  had  been  growing  a  little  weary  of  his 
gentle,  ambling  garrulity,  but  at  this  we  stopped. 
We  had  come  suddenly  on  a  great  belief,  and  we 
looked  at  him  in  surprise  and  even  in  reverence. 
He  talked  on  of  Dick's  adventures,  the  eyes,  in 
his  kindly  wooden  face,  full  of  excitement,  and  as 
he  talked  we  could  see  him  as  he  must  often  be, 
sitting  by  some  cottage  fire  in  winter  evenings, 
and  reading  those  little  paper-bound  books,  each 
with  its  "two-penny  coloured"  cover  of  a  high- 
wayman— reading  them  with  the  simple,  com- 
plete faith  of  a  child. 

[42] 


SHEPHERDS'  ROMANCE 

It  was  not  in  Dick  and  his  adventures  that  we 
were  interested,  but  in  this  romantic  shepherd. 
He  was  touched  with  that  splendid  madness 
which  compels  some  men  to  turn  their  fellows 
into  gods.  Had  he  lived  in  a  town  and  among 
books  instead  of  with  his  sheep  in  the  sweet,  sane 
air  of  the  Downs,  he  might  have  been  one  of  those 
strange  conspirators  who  find  the  hidden  hand  of 
Bacon  in  every  Elizabethan  writer,  and  turn  the 
joyous,  full-hearted  literature  of  all  that  age  into 
a  vast  inhuman  mystery.  Instead  he  believed, 
with  a  faith  which  could  harm  none,  that  every- 
thing which  he  had  read  of  Dick  Turpin  had  been 
written  with  Dick's  own  hand. 

He  had  passed  the  age  at  which  every  reader 
of  fairy  tales  and  adventure  asks  the  question 
which  proclaims  him  mortal,  doomed  to  doubt 
and  change — the  question,  "Did  it  really  hap- 
pen?" He  had  passed  it  with  his  faith  un- 
dimmed.  He  had  missed  the  first  turning  point 
of  mortal  men,  and  gone  on  by  his  own  road. 

He  knew  that  Dick  was  dead.  He  knew  that 
he  would  never  see  him  come  galloping  across 
the  Downs,  nor  did  he  peer  in  at  his  Cunning 
Hole  expecting  to  find  him  at  his  table.  Yet  he 
had,  not  knowing  it,  made  Dick  immortal. 
Another  hundred  books  of  Dick's  adventures 

[431 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

may  yet  be  written,  and  he  will  receive  them  all, 
in  pure  and  simple  faith,  as  from  Dick's  own 
hand.  He  may  never  find  that  Cunning  Hole 
for  which  he  seeks,  but  there  are  great  discover- 
ies still  for  him  to  make.  For  surely  some  day 
the  "  penny  dreadful "  will  grow  weary  of  modern 
times  and  the  discovery  of  crime,  and  the  adora- 
tion of  great  detectives.  It  will  return  again  to 
the  past,  to  the  highroad  and  horsemen,  to 
genial  rogues  and  picaresque  romance.  Then 
will  he  be  happy. 

He  plays  no  pipe  on  the  Downs,  and  sings  no 
songs,  but  he  is  of  the  company  of  Merry  Shep- 
herds. For  as  he  goes  his  slow  way  behind  his 
sheep,  sweeping  the  grass  heads  with  his  coat, 
or  stands  and  looks  across  the  valley  at  the  wood 
where  the  Cunning  Hole  lies  hid,  what  a  great 
figure  of  a  horseman  gallops  always  down  the 
romantic  high-road  of  his  soul. 


[441 


GREAT  ROADS 

OF  all  the  things  that  man  has  ever  made  the 
roads  are  the  greatest  of  his  works  of  un- 
conscious art.  You  cannot  imagine  the  most 
contemptible  of  aesthetes  having  a  road  made 
that  through  his  window  he  might  admire  the 
grace  with  which  it  turned  a  corner;  and  you 
may  be  sure  of  this,  that  if  he  did  it  would  be  a 
vain  thing,  and  that  the  road,  since  it  was  not 
made  to  travel  by,  would  not  be  worth  looking 
at.  Men  have  never  made  a  road  except  for  the 
good  reason  that  they  wanted  very  much  to  reach 
some  place;  and  in  doing  it  they  have  always 
shown  themselves  indifferent  to  beautiful  things. 
They  break  the  hills;  they  ruin  the  streams. 
They  go  on  their  way  caring  for  nothing  but  their 
intent  to  arrive,  and  yet,  not  knowing  what  they 
do,  they  make  the  roads  also  beautiful  and 
mysterious,  with  a  beauty  and  mystery  which 
endure  long  after  their  purpose  has  been  fulfilled, 
and  which  become  a  part  of  the  very  magic  of 
the  earth. 

[451 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

Wherever  the  great  roads  pass  they  bring 
three  noble  things.  They  bring  memory.  When 
the  Romans  built  a  road  for  many  miles  along 
that  high  and  level  summit  which  is  still  called 
High  Street,  they  did  it  only  because  they 
thought  that  so  they  could  most  easily  take  their 
legions  from  Windermere  to  Penrith.  That  road 
was  long  since  overgrown  with  the  old  turf  of  the 
hills,  and  we  go  northwards  now  by  other  ways. 
But  beneath  the  turf  the  road  remains,  a  road 
travelling  no  longer  to  Penrith  but  back  into  the 
years.  It  serves  no  purpose  now,  but  it  remains, 
ennobling  the  hills.  To  them  the  changing  and 
returning  seasons  cannot  bring  forgetfulness. 
There  is  this  road  within  their  turf  keeping  the 
past  alive.  For  this  also  one  can  say  of  the  roads 
that  cannot  be  said  of  any  other  of  the  works  of 
men.  They  may  be  forgotten  but,  so  long  as  they 
are  remembered,  they  cannot  altogether  die. 
Cities  that  have  fallen  into  ruins  are  more  deso- 
late than  emptiness.  The  flowers  and  the  grasses 
have  come  up  like  hands  out  of  the  earth  to  draw 
them  back  to  it.  No  one  will  ever  live  in  them 
again.  Imagination  itself  can  hardly  rebuild 
them,  or  believe  that  men  ever  called  them  home. 
But  where  roads  have  been — even  though  they 
are  covered  with  the  turf,  and  the  wild  things 

[46] 


GREAT  ROADS 

have  returned  to  live  in  them — there  men  can 
still  walk. 

The  second  good  thing  that  the  great  roads 
bring  is  this,  that  they  give  to  all  the  country 
which  they  cross  an  emphasis  and  firmness  to 
whatever  is  beautiful  in  its  shape.  They  make 
the  plains  more  level ;  they  mark,  so  that  the  eye 
can  see  it  more  clearly,  the  beautiful  dip  and 
wave  of  the  land  at  the  foot  of  the  hills;  they 
make  magnificent  the  great  curve  of  a  hillside. 
As  they  can  ennoble  an  empty  place  with  mem- 
ory so  also  can  they  give  grandeur  to  its  very- 
shape.  It  is  so  with  those  great  roads  of  North- 
ern France  that  go  rising  and  falling,  rising  and 
falling,  across  the  arches  of  the  Downs.  Where 
those  unswerving  roads  touch  that  smoothly 
rolling  country  with  its  even  and  gentle  curves, 
it  is  suddenly  changed.  They  seem  to  increase 
its  very  stature,  to  exalt  it. 

Last  of  all  the  great  roads  bring  romance.  Not 
the  eye  only  but  the  mind  travels  by  them, 
imagining  many  things.  Never  does  it  go  so  far 
into  the  distant  mists  as  when  it  follows  the  way 
of  the  white  roads.  This  is  their  final  paradox 
and  mystery.  One  knows  that  it  is  by  following 
them  and  not  by  turning  aside  that  one  will  reach 
the  undiscovered  places. 

[47] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

What  it  is  that  gives  to  certain  roads  this 
enchantment  no  one  can  tell.  Some  have  it  and 
some  have  it  not,  and  some  may  have  it  in  one 
place  and  not  another,  and  some  may  have  it 
only  at  certain  times.  One  cannot  explain  it. 
You  can  only  say  that  of  such  a  road  you  know 
at  once  that  it  will  take  you  to  some  place  where 
you  wish  very  much  to  be.  By  this  you  know 
these  roads,  and  it  is  the  only  thing  really  worth 
having  in  a  road,  and  these  are  the  only  roads 
worth  travelling  by. 

No  one  has  yet  written  a  book  about  the  influ- 
ence of  the  roads  on  the  characters  of  the  na- 
tions who  make  them,  or,  if  you  prefer  it,  about 
the  way  in  which  the  characters  of  nations  are 
made  clear  by  their  roads.  One  could  write  the 
book  from  either  starting  point,  and  from  each  it 
would  be  true.  For  we  show  what  we  are  by 
what  we  make,  and  the  things  once  made,  com- 
pleted and  not  to  be  changed,  are  a  perpetual 
influence  upon  us.  The  history  of  Europe  could 
be  told  in  such  a  book;  and  it  would  have  a  very 
beautiful  chapter  entitled  "The  Part  Played  by 
Hedges  in  the  Development  of  the  English 
Character." 

The  whole  difference  between  the  English  and 
French  peoples  is  in  their  roads.  Each  started 

[48] 


GREAT  ROADS 

with  the  roads  that  the  Romans  left  them,  and 
France  still  travels  by  those  roads ;  but  in  Eng- 
land men  now  search  for  them  under  the  turf  of 
the  Downs  and  trace  across  the  fields  the  way 
that  they  must  have  taken.  The  faith  of  the 
French  mind  in  reason;  its  courage  in  following 
ideas  direct  to  their  conclusion;  its  economy;  its 
love  of  light,  and  of  good  proportion,  and  of  the 
classic  in  beauty — all  these  things  are  expressed 
by  those  great  roads  laid  like  a  sword  across  the 
country,  unswerving,  unhedged,  open  to  the  sun, 
with  their  poplars  kept  spare  and  lean  by  the 
winds.  All  noble  things  the  French  roads  have 
but  one — they  are  without  enchantment.  They 
are  too  straight  and  too  confident.  They  lead 
only  to  that  place  whose  name  is  on  the  map. 

All  that  the  French  roads  are  the  English 
roads  are  not.  They  wander.  They  go,  so  many 
of  them,  between  great  flowering,  wasteful, 
beautiful  hedges;  and  the  trees  rise  out  of  the 
hedges,  stretching  magnificent  arms  from  that 
pleasant  shelter  in  which  they  live,  massive  and 
luxuriant,  as  if  all  the  richness  of  the  earth  were 
only  to  give  them  stature  and  beauty.  Those 
roadside  trees,  and  the  undipped  hedges  full  of 
birds,  and  the  broad  grass  banks,  and  the  ditches 
that  are  wayside  gardens  of  wild  flowers,  what 
4  [49] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

else  could  speak  more  clearly  than  they  of  the 
easy,  wasteful,  jolly  contentment  of  the  English  ? 
Seeing  these  roads  any  foreigner  might  say  that 
indeed  they  could  belong  only  to  the  people  who 
use  so  much  that  word  which  he  cannot  trans- 
late— "comfortable."  Walking  by  them  also  as 
they  wind  and  wander,  seeming  not  to  know 
what  way  they  will  go,  yet  all  the  time  following 
the  curves  and  slopes  of  the  earth,  until  in  some 
mysterious  easy  way  of  their  own  they  do  at 
last  reach  the  place — walking  by  them  so,  he 
might  also  come  to  understand  that  thing  of 
which  he  is  most  impatient,  suspicious  and  re- 
sentful, that  strange  sense  by  which,  blundering 
on  without  any  light  of  reason,  the  English,  in 
the  end,  arrive. 

Above  all,  if  he  followed  the  English  roads,  by 
wayside  hedge  and  elm  and  oak  and  beech,  by  all 
their  flowering,  comfortable,  pleasant  windings, 
until  suddenly  they  lifted  him  out  and  up  to  the 
open  turf  of  moor  or  hill  or  Down,  not  like  those 
French  roads  pointing  straight  as  a  sign-post  to 
the  next  town,  but  still  wandering — as  if  they 
searched  for  something — over  the  hills  and  into 
the  sky — then  at  last  perhaps  he  would  under- 
stand the  final  and  greatest  puzzle  of  the  English : 
why  it  is  that  out  of  this  people,  not  caring  much 

[50] 


GREAT  ROADS 

for  thought,  loving  ease  and  comfort,  out  of  this 
people,  as  he  thinks  them,  of  over-prosperous 
tradesmen,  so  many  poets  have  come  and  have 
travelled  on  to  such  strange  cities  and  lands  and 
fairy  places,  as  no  straight  road  has  ever  reached. 
These  things  and  many  more  a  man  might 
learn  from  the  great  roads,  but  they  stand  also  as 
a  symbol  of  something  greater  even  than  the  soul 
of  a  people.  They  are  the  splendid  symbol  of  all 
noble  art,  the  symbol  of  the  truth  that  men  only 
achieve  beautiful  and  enduring  works  when  they 
are  not  concerned  alone  with  the  beauty  of  what 
they  do,  but  are  intent  also  on  reaching  some- 
thing, even  though  it  is  no  more  than  an  under- 
standing of  what  is  in  their  own  minds. 


THE  SCHOLAR  ROADMAKER 

TIE  was  killed  by  a  wandering  bullet  when 
*•  *•  working  on  a  road  behind  the  lines,  and 
these  are  passages  from  some  of  his  letters.  He 
wrote  a  great  deal,  for  though  he  had  good  com- 
rades in  his  Labour  Battalion,  there  were  none 
to  whom  he  could  talk  very  much,  and  so  he  was 
always  writing  for  the  comfort  and  pleasure  of  his 
own  mind.  It  left  him  content  in  the  monotony 
of  a  labour  that  had  none  of  the  fierce  moments 
of  a  soldier's  life,  though  it  brought  him  a 
soldier's  death. 

His  letters  were  written  in  all  sorts  of  odd 
places,  whenever  the  fancy  took  him  and  he  had 
five  minutes  leisure,  by  the  light  of  a  candle 
stump  as  he  sprawled  on  the  floor  of  his  billet, 
or  as  he  lay  at  the  road-side  resting;  and  he  spoke 
of  them  always  as  his  "raw  stuff,"  that  some  day 
he  would  use.  They  are  full  of  cheerful  talk 
about  all  the  books  that  he  would  write  after  the 
war,  but  most  of  all  about  his  book  on  roads. 
And  now  that  wandering  bullet  has  brought  him 

[53] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

and  them  to  the  dust,  and  there  remains  nothing 
of  it  all  but  a  grave  in  France  and  a  box  full  of 
"raw  stuff"  and  eager  hope. 


"I  seem  now  to  have  been  busy  all  my  life 
with  roads.  There  was  a  bit  of  road  that  I  used 
to  love  when  I  was  a  boy.  It  was  across  the 
valley  from  my  home.  One  end  of  it  rose  out  of 
the  woods,  and  the  other  went  over  the  edge  of 
the  hill.  I  used  to  play  with  that  bit  of  road;  I 
used  to  play  at  sending  people  up  and  down  it. 
Once  you  sent  them  over  you  never  knew  just 
how  they  would  come  back,  or  what  they  would 
bring.  It  was  this  that  made  it  a  fine  game,  a 
game  of  unending  fancies.  I  often  think  of  it  as 
I  bend  over  these  roads. 

"And  I  often  remember  how  the  news  of  the 
war  first  came  to  me.  I  was  in  the  north  of 
England  that  August,  tramping  along  the  crest 
of  the  hills  that  are  still  called  High  Street,  after 
the  road  which  the  Romans  built  there.  In  the 
late  twilight  I  came  down  to  an  inn  at  the  head 
of  a  lake.  I  had  been  thinking  of  the  Roman 
legionaries  who  once  upon  a  time  went  that  way, 
and  feeling  the  utter  freedom  and  peace  of  it  all. 
For  I  was  alone  all  day  with  the  turf  and  the  wind 

[54] 


THE  SCHOLAR  ROADMAKER 

and  the  white  sign-posts,  that  up  there  on  the  top 
of  the  hills  seemed  to  point  to  no  places  on  earth 
but  to  some  distant  places  of  the  sky.  In  the  inn 
I  picked  up  a  paper  two  days  old  and  read  the 
declaration  of  war. 

"There  was  destiny  in  it  when  they  made  me  a 
roadmaker. 


"  When  I  am  cheerful  I  dream  of  writing  the 
greatest  book  on  roads  that  was  ever  written. 
For  I  have  done  more  than  tramp  the  roads  and 
love  them.  I  have  worked  on  them  and  ached 
for  them.  I  shall  go  to  Rome  where  all  the  great 
roads  start ;  and  I  shall  write  of  it  all  in  a  house 
that  I  see  (though  it  is  still  unbuilt)  just  under 
the  edge  of  the  North  Downs  where  the  oldest 
road  in  England  runs.  That  is  how  I  dream 
when  I  am  cheerful ;  and  when  I  am  sad  I  think 
that  I  shall  die  on  one  of  these  roads  and  drop 
into  a  shell  hole. 


"We  work  too  hard  in  the  open  air  to  dream  at 
night.  When  I  lie  down  I  tumble  straight  into 
deep  sleep.  But  sometimes  I  have  a  half  dream 
in  the  mornings,  before  I  am  fully  awake.  It  is 

[55] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

a  dream  always  of  the  road  that,  at  the  moment, 
we  are  making  across  this  shell-broken,  pitiful 
country;  but  always  as  I  go  along  it  it  becomes 
that  white  road  over  the  hill  that  I  knew  when  I 
was  a  boy.  I  know  that  they  are  the  same  roads 
but  I  never  see  where  they  join.  There  is  always 
a  bit  of  dead  ground  between  them,  and  I  always 
wake  before  I  come  to  it.  But  beyond  I  see  the 
old  road  very  clear,  going  over  the  hill. 


"I  had  rather  a  success  with  the  battalion  the 
other  night.  We  were  back  in  camp.  It  had 
been  a  day  of  continual  rain,  awful  to  work  in, 
and  there  had  been  fairly  heavy  shelling  that  had 
cut  up  our  work.  We  were  sodden  and  discon- 
tented and  cursed  roads  and  roadmaking  and 
prayed  to  be  in  the  trenches,  and  sneered  at  our- 
selves because  we  were  not  real  soldiers.  It  was 
then  that  I  broke  in  and  told  them  of  the  Roman 
roads,  and  what  awful  labour  they  were  to  make, 
built  in  stone  across  the  hills,  and  how  those 
roads  made  the  Empire.  I  talked  of  that  great 
old  road  under  the  trees  above  Mickleham  that 
crosses  Epsom  Downs  by  the  racecourse  (they 
all  knew  that)  and  I  talked  of  that  road  which 
you  can  still  see  at  Blackstone  Edge,  with  the 

[56] 


THE  SCHOLAR  ROADMAKER 

heavy  flags  as  the  Romans  laid  them.  And  I  had 
them  listening. 

"Then  a  man  who  had  worked  on  the  Uganda 
Railway  joined  in,  and  a  navvy  who  had  laid 
wood  pavements  in  London,  and  another  man 
who  was  working,  when  the  war  came,  on  the  new 
road  by  the  Ouse  down  to  the  sea.  Before  we 
had  done  talking  we  all  knew  that  roadmaking 
was  the  finest  work  in  the  world. 

"  I  shall  never  smell  the  heavy  smell  of  damp 
clothes  again  without  thinking  of  that  scene ;  and 
how  the  man  from  East  Africa  spoke,  in  little 
unexpected  flashes,  of  the  wonder  of  his  work; 
and  how  the  navvy  from  London  laid  down  the 
law  of  roads,  and,  whatever  you  might  say  of 
Roman  stone,  would  not  allow  that  any  road 
was  a  real  road  unless  it  were  built  of  wood. 


"  I  often  think  of  what  de  Musset  wrote,  that 
if  a  man  despaired  of  being  a  poet  he  should 
shoulder  his  pack  and  march  in  the  ranks.  It  is 
when  we  march  that  I  do  all  my  thinking.  With 
this  perpetual  work  in  the  open,  if  I  sit  down  to 
think  I  fall  asleep ;  and  there  is  no  thinking  as  we 
work.  Then  the  body  takes  possession  of  the 
mind.  Sometimes  a  line  of  a  song,  or  the  last 

[57] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

sentence  I  thought  before  we  took  up  tools,  will 
occupy  it  all  the  day.  It  can  go  no  further.  But 
when  we  are  marching  then  it  can  roam.  While 
my  body  drones  on  in  the  mud  below,  it  travels 
on  the  poplar  tops.  I  have  never  known  it  so 
free.  I  have  never  before  so  dreamed  and 
planned,  and  loved  the  distant  and  delightful 
things  as  now  in  the  prison-house  of  this  con- 
centrated, unresting  labour  of  war." 


When  the  roadmaker  was  shot  the  last  of  his 
letters  was  still  in  his  pocket. 

"  I  had  that  dream  of  the  two  roads  again  the 
other  night,  but  it  was  different.  While  always 
before  I  have  looked  forward  to  the  old  road  from 
the  road  that  we  were  making,  this  time  I  was  on 
that  old  road  and  going  up  to  the  edge  of  the  hill. 
I  was  nearly  at  the  top  when  I  stopped  to  look 
back.  But  the  ground  where  the  two  joined  was 
still  hidden.  I  must  have  crossed  it  before  the 
dream  began.  I  wonder  what  had  happened 
there." 


[58] 


WARRIOR  TREES 

OF  the  past  of  the  Downs  what  remains? 
There  was  the  time  when  men  lived  in  their 
freedom  and  sweetness,  high  above  the  oak  for- 
ests and  the  marshes,  the  wolf  packs  and  the 
fevers  of  the  weald ;  when  they  cut  their  axes  and 
their  arrowheads  from  the  flints  of  Cissbury,  and 
fought  their  wars  on  that  open  turf.  There  was 
the  time  when  Vespasian  led  the  2nd  Legion 
from  London  to  conquer  southern  England; 
when  the  legionaries  dug  their  trenches,  and 
built  their  palisades,  and  lit  their  camp  fires  all 
along  the  summit  of  the  Downs,  and  made  the 
perilous  journeys  for  water  into  the  weald  in  the 
shelter  of  the  deep,  trenched  paths.  There  was 
the  time  when  Ella  sailed  in  from  Germany  with 
his  three  ships  and  his  sons,  and  through  many 
years  fought  for  the  Downs.  But  of  all  those 
years,  and  of  those  little  wars,  which  were  the 
birth  struggles  of  England,  what  remains?  The 
morning  mists  still  blow  in  from  the  sea,  as  when 
they  came  to  fill  the  earliest  dew-ponds  and  to 

[591 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

make  the  shivering  Roman  sentry  long  for  Pro- 
vence or  the  warm  Italian  plains,  but  time  and 
the  turf  have  rounded  the  trenches  and  smoothed 
the  great  camps  as  tides  wash  out  sand  castles. 
The  Downs  still  remain,  immense  and  tranquil 
and  free,  as  they  were  before  men  came. 

Only  the  trees  of  the  Downs  seem  to  be 
troubled  by  that  distant  past.  There  is  a 
strangeness  in  them  as  if  the  spirit  of  the  ancient 
soldiers  of  the  Downs,  Briton  and  Roman  and 
Saxon,  were  still  an  influence  deep  below  the  turf 
that  feeds  their  roots.  The  trees  alone  of  all  the 
things  of  the  Downs  seem  to  speak  of  remem- 
bered wars.  I  could  believe  that  the  wandering 
men  who  drove  their  flocks  across  the  Downs, 
and  watched  in  the  morning  the  marsh  fogs  of 
the  weald,  and  listened  at  night  for  the  bark  of 
the  wolves,  and  the  men  who  climbed  in  the 
darkness  from  the  shelter  of  the  forests  and 
prowled  round  the  Roman  camps,  still  nourish 
with  their  spirits  those  stunted  thorns  that 
stand,  forlorn  and  twisted,  on  the  Downs.  They 
seem  to  belong  to  an  earlier,  more  savage  race 
than  the  great  beeches,  whose  roots,  it  may  be, 
have  found  the  graves  of  the  legionaries. 

Wherever  the  beeches  grow  on  the  slopes  of 
the  Downs  they  are  changed.  They  seem  to  have 

[60] 


WARRIOR  TREES 

lost  the  deep-rooted  steadfast  content  of  the 
trees  of  the  weald  and  to  have  gathered,  waiting 
for  some  order  to  come.  They  fill  the  great 
valleys  like  armies,  in  close  ranks,  expectant, 
and  when  the  wind  moves  among  them  it  might 
be  the  first  step  of  a  sudden  advance.  In  all  the 
combes  along  the  Downs  between  Adur  and 
Arun  are  little  companies  of  trees  that  are  gath- 
ered close  together  and  seem  to  press  in  against 
the  Downs — as  the  British  warriors  must  once 
have  crouched  below  the  Roman  camps,  and 
here  and  there,  halfway  up  the  slopes,  solitary 
trees  seem  to  wait  until  the  time  shall  come  to 
take  the  next  step  upwards. 

Everywhere  among  the  trees  is  this  strange 
expectancy,  as  if  some  day  an  enchantment  will 
be  broken,  and  their  roots  be  freed,  and  they 
themselves  be  turned  again  into  armed  men  who 
will  sweep  upwards  and  over  the  great  green 
rampart  which  lies  above,  and  once  more  look 
southwards  to  the  sea. 

Along  that  rampart  also  where  once  the  sen- 
tries watched,  it  is  the  trees  which  seem  to  have 
kept  the  memory  of  the  trenched  and  palisaded 
camps.  I  do  not  think  of  vigilance  and  war  when 
I  look  at  the  smoothed  out  trenches  of  Ditchling 
or  even  the  deeper  earthworks  of  Wolstonbury, 

[61] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

but  at  those  strange  and  solitary  circles  of 
beeches,  in  which  the  trees  grow  so  close  together 
that  only  a  flicker  of  light  shows  through  their 
branches.  Far  away  across  the  Downs  you  see 
these  camps  of  trees,  standing  high  and  lonely 
and  self-sufficient  in  the  emptiness  of  the  Downs. 
It  is  only  when  you  come  near  them  that  you  see 
them  to  be  trees.  In  the  distance  they  are  grey 
and  smooth  as  stone.  They  stand  like  fortress 
rocks.  The  winds  cannot  stir  them. 

When  the  enchantment  is  lifted,  it  will  be  they, 
and  not  the  old  camps  of  turf,  which  will  turn  to 
palisades,  and  glitter  with  the  spear  heads  and 
the  helmets  and  the  strong  short  swords  of  the 
waiting  legionaries.  So  do  the  trees  seem  still  to 
keep  the  memory  of  wars  ten  centuries  old,  and 
to  draw  up  from  the  ancient  graves  the  spirit  of 
buried  soldiers.  I  wonder  if  at  night,  when  the 
sheep  are  gathered  into  their  folds  and  men  have 
gone  back  to  the  weald,  all  these  trees — the  great 
circles  of  beeches  like  grey  forts,  and  the  solitary 
thorns,  and  the  little  hangars  waiting  in  shelter 
to  climb  the  Downs — become  the  toys  of  the 
children  of  the  gods,  and  if  this  can  be  their  great 
nursery,  where,  in  the  hours  when  men  and  the 
sheep  and  the  flowers  are  asleep,  they  come  to 
play  at  soldiers? 

[62] 


i 


THE  ROAD  TO  DIDLING 

N  a  manner  of  speaking  I  am  now,  and  always 
shall  be,  on  that  road.  Just  as  here  and 
there,  sometimes  on  this  road  sometimes  on  that, 
on  old  turf  tracks  and  between  the  houses  of  dark 
and  busy  streets,  one  remembers  that  here,  under 
one's  feet,  is  a  road  to  a  Roman  town,  so  in  un- 
expected places  do  I  wonder  if  this,  on  which  I 
walk,  may  not  be  part  of  the  road  to  Didling. 
All  roads  do  not  lead  to  Didling  as  they  lead  to 
Rome,  but  for  three  minutes  of  one  summer 
evening  we  were  on  a  road  which  went  to  that 
place  and  nowhere  else. 

No  one  had  ever  spoken  of  it  to  us;  but  one 
morning,  stopping  in  the  rain  by  a  chalk  quarry, 
halfway  up  the  Downs,  we  found  that  name  on 
the  map.  The  name  is  still  there.  It  is  not  an 

elfin  name  which  we  have  never  been  able  to  find 

. 
again,  which  came  on  that  one  morning  to  lead 

us  astray,  either  for  our  sorrow  or  our  happiness. 
The  name  is  there,  and  the  place,  as  I  believe,  is 
there,  a  solid  English  place  of  stone  and  flint,  red 

[63] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

tiles  and  brown  thatch.  It  lies — but  what  does 
it  matter  where  it  lies?  Anyone  can  find  it  for 
himself  on  the  map. 

There  and  then,  standing  by  the  quarry 
against  a  hazel  bush  while  the  wind  shook  the 
rain  drops  in  heavy  showers  off  the  full-leaved 
beech  trees,  we  resolved  to  set  out  for  Didling. 
We  climbed  the  steep  chalk  path,  and  at  the 
summit  turned  westwards  by  the  turf  road.  The 
clouds  lay  close  above  us,  in  even  and  dark  lines, 
like  enormous  black  rafters  across  the  sky.  With 
those  clouds  above  and  the  tall  beech  woods  on 
either  side,  through  whose  branches  we  could  see, 
as  through  little  windows,  far  down  into  the 
weald,  it  was  as  if  we  were  walking  all  this  day 
in  a  great  dark  room.  It  was  a  room  full  of  the 
wind  and  the  rain,  and  from  it  we  looked  out 
always  at  a  distant,  fairy  world.  For  from  under 
the  low  clouds  we  could  see,  many  miles  distant, 
hills  where  the  sun  shone. 

So  we  tramped  towards  Didling.  Who  had  not 
been  enchanted,  opening  his  map,  to  have  come 
suddenly  on  such  a  name;  to  have  seen  it,  for  the 
first  time,  when  he  was  already  on  the  road;  to 
have  found  that  it  was  not  many  miles  away? 
Didling  filled  our  day.  We  talked  of  it.  We 
wondered  what  manner  of  place  it  was.  We 

[64] 


THE  ROAD  TO  DIDLING 

joked  about  it.  We  made  such  rhymes  to  it  as 
there  were  to  make,  and  all  day  long  we  drew 
nearer  to  it.  There  was  in  that  name  something 
at  once  so  comical  and  so  romantic,  so  friendly 
and  so  remote,  so  homelike  and  yet  so  elfin,  that 
we  could  not  tire  of  it.  We  had  never  heard  of 
Didling  before.  But  three  hours  since  we  should 
have  laughed  if  anyone  had  spoken  of  it,  saying, 
"There  is  no  such  place,  but  if  there  were,  what 
a  strange  place  it  must  be," — and  now  we  should 
reach  it  by  tea  time. 

The  rain  came  and  went.  We  bent  to  its  fierce- 
ness, and  then  raised  our  heads  to  watch  its 
silver  squadrons  go  sweeping  across  half  a 
county.  The  wind  dried  us  as  soon  as  the  rain 
had  passed.  Far  away,  now  here  now  there,  we 
saw  the  sunlight  mingling  with  the  rain,  but  we 
walked  always  under  the  dark  low  rafters  of  the 
clouds;  and  at  every  step  we  came  nearer  to 
Didling  that  waited  to  welcome  us  and  to  laugh 
with  us. 

At  midday  we  sat  down  to  eat  on  a  fallen  tree 
where  a  road,  soft  with  last  year's  leaves  and 
black  with  rain,  went  steeply  down  through  the 
woods.  And  as  we  ate  we  heard  from  that  road 
a  voice  singing,  loudly  and  triumphantly.  It 
sang  "On  the  road  to  Didling,"  and  then  linger- 

[65] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

ingly  and  softly,  as  if  not  willing  to  leave  it,  the 
voice  repeated  the  name  "  Did-el-ling,"  and  then 
it  took  up  the  song  again, 

"The  old  turf  road  to  Didling" 

and  again,  and  in  the  same  fond  way,  "  Did-el- 
ling," 

"  Sometimes  you'll  spy 
Elves  dancing  by 
To  the  sound  of  fiddlers  fiddling,  fiddling,  fiddling  ..." 

But  how  many  times  the  voice  repeated  the  word 
we  could  not  say,  for  it  fell  very  low  and  there 
was,  to  us,  a  long  silence  before  it  took  up  the 
song  again,  loudly,  but  further  away  than  before, 

"On  the  road  to  Didling, 

Didling, 
The  old  turf  road  to  Didling, 

Didling 

If  you  hold  your  ear, 
Perhaps  you'll  hear 
Those  fairy  fiddlers,  fiddling,  fiddling/' 

At  that  moment  the  wind  suddenly  caught  the 
wet  tree  above  us  and  shook  it  fiercely,  and  when 
it  had  passed  the  voice  had  gone.  If  there  was 
more  to  that  song  we  could  not  hear  it,  though  we 
listened  for  a  long  time. 

Then  we  went  on  our  way  trying  to  sing  the 
[66] 


THE  ROAD  TO  DIDLING 

song  for  ourselves;  but  we  could  not  sing  it.  It 
was  one  of  those  tunes  which  run  very  clearly  in 
the  head,  but  as  soon  as  the  voice  attempts  to 
catch  them  they  dart  away.  We  pursued  it  so  for 
nearly  two  miles  of  our  road ;  but  we  could  not 
sing  it.  So  we  tried  no  more.  We  stayed  con- 
tent with  the  tune  running  in  our  heads,  not  like 
a  song  that  one  has  sung  once  and  cannot  forget, 
but  gently,  evenly,  delightfully  like  a  rippling 
stream. 

So,  too,  with  the  words,  they  were  clear  in  my 
mind  until  I  tried  to  write  them  down,  and  then 
I  knew  that  I  had  not  got  them  right.  All  I  can 
say  is  that  as  the  man  sang  them  they  were,  in 
some  way  that  I  cannot  discover,  both  comical 
and  beautiful. 

Three  hours  later  we  turned  aside  from  the 
turf  road  and  went  down  by  a  steep  chalk  track 
into  the  weald.  At  once  everything  was  very 
still.  A  great  buttress  of  the  Downs,  sheltering 
in  its  curve  a  field  of  corn,  held  off  the  wind,  and 
between  tall  hedges,  odorous,  rain-laden  and 
covered  with  Travellers'  Joy,  we  came  to  a  road. 
To  the  left  it  went  to  villages  that  do  not  matter. 
To  the  right  it  went  to  Didling.  Across  the 
fields  we  could  already  see  hay-ricks  and  the 
steep  roof  of  a  barn  all  golden  with  lichen. 

[67] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

Above  us  stood  the  beautiful  shape  of  the  Downs, 
serene  and  benign  as  the  figure  of  an  angel.  We 
turned  to  the  right,  but  before  we  had  gone  many 
yards  we  stopped  again  to  consider  our  way. 
The  road  was  clear,  but  out  in  the  weald,  where 
evening  already  began  to  stoop  and  settle  gently 
over  the  fields,  was  a  station,  and  the  last  train 
of  the  day.  By  which  road  should  we  be  sure  to 
catch  it?  At  any  other  time  this  had  been  a 
trivial  choice,  but  now  with  Didling  already 
rising  among  the  fields  to  welcome  us,  we  stood 
there  very  solemnly  looking  at  our  watches. 
Their  hands  were  against  us,  and  we  turned 
about.  We  turned  feeling  that  there  was  some- 
thing more  than  time  which  made  us  take  the 
other  road.  We  were  meant  not  to  enter  Didling, 
though  we  had  travelled  towards  it  the  whole 
day,  though  we  had  talked  of  it  until  already 
we  seemed  to  know  it  like  our  own  home. 

We  took  the  other  road  and,  looking  back,  we 
could  see  only  the  gentle  shape  of  the  Downs 
rising  above  the  fields.  We  had  passed  Didling 
by.  We  had  not  trod  its  street — for  it  could  have 
had  but  one, — nor  looked  in  at  its  windows,  nor 
knocked  on  its  doors.  We  had  seen  only  that  one 
golden  roof  in  the  distance,  and  we  had  turned 
aside.  Yet  we  went  on  our  way  satisfied,  and 

[68] 


THE  ROAD  TO  DIDLING 

even  exalted.  It  was  as  if  we  had  indeed  entered 
Didling  and  found  it  as  lovely  and  as  comical  as 
we  had  desired. 

We  went  on  by  the  darkening  road,  and  now  in 
our  content  we  sang  aloud  nearly  all  the  way; 
but  it  was  no  longer  the  elfin,  unseizable  Song  of 
Didling  that  we  tried  to  sing.  We  sang  of  simple 
and  earthly  things.  About  this  time,  we  knew, 
far  away,  steak  and  onions  were  beginning  to 
prepare  for  our  supper,  and  so  we  sang  of  these. 
We  sang  of  them  to  most  of  the  tunes  that  we 
knew,  and  they  seemed  to  us,  in  that  splendid 
mood,  to  go  equally  well  with  them  all — with 
tunes  of  comic  songs  and  of  anthems,  of  marching 
songs  and  of  love  songs.  We  had  never  thought 
before  of  singing  of  such  things,  nor  had  we  ever 
before  sung  so  carelessly,  so  untiringly  or  en- 
joyed so  much  to  be  singing.  Didling  was  behind 
us.  We  had  renounced  it,  but  its  influence  went 
with  us  making  us  happy;  and  now  we  doubly 
possess  that  comical,  romantic  place — as  a  place 
which  we  have  found  to  be  all  that  we  desired, 
and  as  a  place  which,  some  day,  we  shall  see  for 
the  first  time. 


[69] 


WINTER  WOODS 

IT  is  the  winter  woods  that  are  haunted.  Why 
*  look  for  fairies  in  the  spring,  when  the  buds 
are  green,  when  the  primroses  first  lighten  the 
long  winter  darkness  and  the  woods  are  too  full 
of  the  beauty  of  this  world  for  the  mind  to  pass 
beyond  it  ?  If  one  would  find  them  it  must  be 
behind  the  burnt  and  shrivelled  tatters  of  the 
beech  leaves  that  lie  on  the  dark  boughs  of  De- 
cember. In  the  woods  of  spring  what  more 
would  one  hope  or  wish  to  find  than  the  buds  and 
flowers  of  this  good  life  beginning?  But  the  un- 
changing winter  woods,  that  are  dead  to  this 
world,  are  most  like  an  entrance  to  some  world 
beyond.  In  their  silence  the  mind  travels  on- 
ward, searching  for  strange  places,  with  eyes  that 
look  and  ears  that  listen  for  the  enchantments  of 
another  world.  It  is  then,  between  the  dead 
brown  leaves,  that  one  might  at  any  moment  see 
the  holly-berry  red  of  fairy  caps,  or  look  into 
fairy  faces  through  the  cloudy  windows  of  the 
white  ice  at  the  edge  of  the  dark  pools. 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

The  silence  of  the  winter  woods  is  not  the 
silence  of  death,  as  is  commonly  said,  but  the 
silence  of  suspense.  They  are  not  woods  where 
everything  has  happened  but  where  anything 
might  happen;  and  there  is  this  great  difference 
between  them  and  the  woods  of  summer,  that 
the  woods  of  summer  are  loveliest  when  you  go 
into  them  and  the  woods  of  winter  when  you 
pass  them  by — the  woods  of  summer  as  you  lie 
in  their  heart  and  watch  the  wind  shake  down 
the  sunlight  out  of  their  rustling  leaves,  the 
woods  of  winter  as  you  march  towards  them 
looking  at  that  dark  and  turreted  wall  which 
they  make  against  the  sky. 

These  winter  woods  are  not  the  frosted  woods 
which  are  as  gay  and  beautiful  as  the  woods  of 
spring,  so  that  the  heart  sings  in  them  though 
they  are  silent,  but  the  black  woods  of  the  grey 
time,  the  woods  that  throw  no  shadows.  None 
could  walk  towards  them  without  the  hope  of 
finding  something  strange  and  beautiful  within. 
They  are  of  greater  stature  than  the  woods  of 
spring.  The  smallest  copse  has  the  mystery 
and  grandeur  of  a  forest,  and  a  belt  of  trees 
against  the  low  winter  light  is  like  a  majestic 
entrance  to  the  sky.  They  are  not  trees  grow- 
ing from  the  earth,  but  pillars  holding  up  the 

[72] 


WINTER  WOODS 

sky.    Their  tops  touch  its  light.   They  stand  like 
stone. 

Somewhere  in  the  heart  of  these  winter  woods 
are  all  the  castles  of  romance,  beyond  that  dark 
mist  of  the  close  and  naked  twigs  which  hides 
them  more  securely  than  all  the  heavy  greenery 
of  summer.  It  must  have  been  in  a  winter  wood, 
a  wood  that  never  budded  nor  blossomed, 
whose  black  branches  grew  closer  and  closer,  and 
whose  twigs  wove  between  them  a  darker  and 
darker  mist,  that  the  Princess  slept  for  a  hundred 
years.  All  round  that  enchanted  wood  were 
single  fir  trees,  raven  black,  as  fir  trees  are  in  the 
grey  of  winter  afternoons,  like  sentinel  towers  on 
the  edge  of  mystery,  and  from  its  depths  rose 
the  peaks  of  solitary  trees  standing  like  pin- 
nacles of  rock  against  a  low  yellow  sky  which  did 
not  change.  Within  it,  at  its  very  heart  was  a 
wood  of  larches,  most  mysterious  of  all  the  trees, 
for  in  winter  they  are  not  a  wood  at  all  until  you 
touch  them,  but  a  grey  cloud.  Beyond  them  was 
a  great  brown  wall  of  beech  leaves,  and  within 
that  wall  the  sleeping  palace  lay,  a  palace  built 
of  wood  which  through  those  hundred  years  of 
sleep  had  slowly  turned  to  trees  again ;  but  since 
they  too  sleep  in  that  long  winter  enchantment, 
they  put  forth  no  green  leaves  but  only  dark 

[73] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

twigs.  Little  by  little  the  tall  windows  drew 
across  themselves  a  lattice  of  their  own  branches, 
and  the  wood  carving  of  the  rooms  turned  very 
slowly  into  twisted  tree  stems,  and  the  fading 
gold  upon  them  to  withered  leaves.  So  the  wood 
stood  round  the  sleeping  Princess  for  a  hundred 
years,  black  when  all  the  world  about  it  was 
green,  and  still  black  when  all  the  world  was 
white  with  frost. 

No  time  in  all  the  year  is  more  beautiful  than 
the  end  of  a  winter's  day,  when  the  mild  stillness 
is  touched  by  an  evening  frost,  and  all  the  towns 
lie  hidden  in  mist  and  you  walk  beside  those 
silent  woods  watching  them  turn  to  stone  in  the 
dusk.  At  such  a  time  the  trees  and  bushes  of 
the  gardens  that  you  pass,  as  you  go  towards  the 
town,  have  the  freshness  and  the  majesty  of  the 
woods.  It  is  then,  in  that  frosty  and  darkening 
winter  air,  that  the  sweet  breath  and  magic  of 
the  country,  which  in  the  summer  would  long 
since  have  left  you,  come  far  with  you,  and  blow 
a  little  way  into  the  very  streets  of  the  town. 


[741 


THE  MAP 

'  I  ^HIS  happened  on  the  road  one  day.  You 
•*•  know  how  sometimes  far  inland  you  will 
suddenly  smell  the  sea  in  the  wind.  That  day, 
on  the  French  road,  I  smelt  England  in  it  every 
time  I  lifted  my  head  and  it  blew  on  my  face. 
And  all  that  had  happened  was  that  I  saw  a  man 
sitting  by  the  road  looking  at  a  map.  He  was 
holding  it  wide  open  like  a  newspaper. 

It  was  an  odd  thing  to  see  a  Bartholomew's 
half-inch  map  on  a  roadside  in  France.  As  he 
held  it  I  could  read  the  name.  It  was  my  own  old 
map ;  and  all  its  hills  suddenly  rose  up  before  me 
in  their  clear  and  even  line  against  the  sky.  I 
went  across  to  him. 

"Can  you  tell  me,"  said  I,  "if  this  is  the  road 
to  Lullington?" 

He  jumped,  and  I  took  a  corner  of  the  map  and 
looked  at  it.  There  was  the  beautiful,  familiar 
curve  of  the  coast,  and  the  roads  that  I  had 
travelled  and  the  names  that  I  knew.  But  for 
one  moment  they  looked  very  strange.  All 

[751 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

names  are  comic  until  you  know  them,  and  after 
Montreuil  and  Arras  and  Amiens  they  were,  for 
the  first  moment,  comic — broad  and  blunt  and 
comic  as  I  read  them — Plumpton  and  Iford  and 
Glynde,  all  the  little  villages  that  you  look  down 
on  from  the  hills — but  only  for  a  moment  and 
then  I  was  back  among  them  again.  And  there 
across  the  wandering  twisted  English  roads  lay 
that  faint  unswerving  line  which  marked  what 
once  had  been  the  Roman  road.  It  was  like  a 
sudden  shadow,  thrown  on  that  peaceful  col- 
oured map,  by  these  great  war  roads  of  France. 

Then  I  discovered  what  I  had  never  known 
before,  that  an  old  map  is  full  of  odd  windows — 
little  odd  windows  opening  into  the  past.  As  I 
followed  the  many  ways  I  had  gone,  road  by 
road,  name  after  familiar  name  all  across  from 
the  silver  birches  of  Tilgate  to  the  Seven  Sisters 
looking  out  to  sea,  those  windows  kept  opening 
to  me.  Memories  of  little  things  long  forgotten 
came  out  of  the  map  to  me.  They  came  as 
sudden,  as  vivid,  as  unexpected  as  that  smell  of 
the  sea  in  the  wind. 

We  looked  at  the  map  together  for  some  time, 
remembering  things.  Then  the  man  spoke. 

"You  know  that  St.  Crispian  speech?"  he  said 
abruptly.  "  It's  about  the  only  thing  I  learnt  at 

[76] 


THE  MAP 

school  that  I  still  remember,  not  all  of  it,  just  the 
bit  from  'Old  men  forget/  I  remember  how  I 
cried  over  it  and  thought  I  could  never  learn  it, 
and  had  it  driven  into  me  word  by  word,  and  now 
I  couldn't  forget  it  if  I  tried — 'Old  men  forget/ 
and  then  the  English  names,  like  a  drum  rolling, 

Harry  the  King,  Bedford  and  Exeter, 

Warwick  and  Talbot,  Salisbury  and  Gloucester " 

He  stopped  and  looked  at  me. 

"That  map's  full  of  Crispian  speeches,"  he  said. 
"You  can  make  them  up  as  you  go  along  and  all 
as  fine  as  Shakespeare,"  and  he  began  to  chant, 

"  Midhurst  and  Petworth,  Amberley,  Poynings, 
Hurstpierpoint,  Bramber  .   .   .  ' 

And  so  he  went  on  in  sonorous  iambics,  rolling 
off  the  names,  until  those  little  villages — red 
cottages  and  dark  beech  trees  under  the  bare 
Downs — sounded  like  a  battle  cry  of  the  names  of 
great  men. 

"That  map's  better  than  all  the  songs,"  he 
said,  "and  if  I  didn't  carry  a  map  I  think  I'd 
carry  a  railway  guide.  Then  I  should  have  all 
England  in  my  pocket.  What  more  do  you  want 
to  know  of  any  place  than  its  name  and  how  far 
it  is  to  go  there?  But  England  is  too  big  for  any 
one  man.  This  is  my  bit." 

[771 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

He  put  his  finger  on  the  map  and  moving  it 
along  the  grass  track  on  the  top  of  the  hills  came 
to  the  two  crossed  swords  above  Houndean 
Bottom,  and  the  date  1264. 

"We  lived  across  the  valley  from  there/'  he 
said.  "  It  seemed  very  wonderful  then  to  have  a 
battlefield  so  near  home.  We'd  look  at  it  across 
the  water-meadows.  The  sun  used  to  set  just 
over  it  and  turn  it  all  red.  I  used  to  think  there 
were  always  men  fighting  somewhere  over  there 
where  the  sun  set.  It  made  life  exciting,  and, 
when  the  sun  had  gone,  rather  fearful  too.  One 
never  knew  then  what  might  not  come  galloping 
down  the  big  road. 

"It  seemed  to  be  years  that  I  waited  and 
wanted  to  see  that  battlefield,  and  then  in  the 
end  I  saw  it,  and  it  was  nothing  but  a  slope  of 
the  hills,  like  any  other,  with  sheep  feeding  on  it. 
I  could  have  cried.  Half  the  charm  went  out  of 
life  when  I  saw  those  sheep.  There  seemed 
nothing  left  to  wonder  about,  or  to  be  afraid  of 
when  it  began  to  get  dark.  Well,  I've  seen 
battlefields  now. 

"  I  went  over  on  the  Somme  with  the  names  of 
that  part  in  my  head — Wilmington,  Friston, 
Beddingham,  and  Firle — the  last  time  I  went 
through  Firle  it  was  August  and  there  was  an  old 

[78] 


THE  MAP 

lady  in  her  garden  dusting  her  hollyhocks.  When 
I  was  wounded  I  crawled  into  a  trench,  a  chalk 
trench,  and  lay  there.  I  must  have  got  light- 
headed, for  I  thought  I  was  down  on  the  shore 
under  the  cliff  by  Cliff  End,  and  the  sea  was 
coming  in  with  a  sou'wester  behind  it — that  must 
have  been  the  guns — and  I  could  not  get  away. 
I  think  in  my  fright  I  tried  to  crawl  up  the 
trench  side,  and  then  I  tried  to  say  those  names 
over  again  but  they  would  not  come  right,  until 
at  last  I  got  Wilmington — just  that  one;  and  I 
said  it  over  and  over  again,  slowly,  when  I  felt 
I  needed  it.  You  know  how  men  clutch  them- 
selves sometimes  when  they  have  been  hit,  as  if 
they  were  afraid  that  they  would  break  into 
pieces.  My  head  felt  like  that,  but  that  name 
seemed  to  keep  it  together — 'Wilmington.'  .  .  ." 

All  the  time  as  we  talked,  you  understand,  we 
were  looking  at  the  map  together,  following  the 
roads,  and  the  roads  leading  our  thoughts.  We 
talked  of  the  inns  that  we  both  knew,  and  what 
we  had  eaten  and  drunk  there.  We  went  by 
those  roads  with  giant  strides.  We  visited  each 
village  like  gods. 

"You'll  think  it  absurd,"  he  said,  "but  I 
always  see  those  villages  as  candle-flames.  It 
came  to  me  like  that  one  night,  when  there  were 

[79] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

all  sorts  of  strange  glares  and  coloured  lights  in 
the  sky  and  sudden  bursts  of  firing.  When  I 
thought  of  those  quiet  villages,  and  the  night 
quite  still  all  round  them,  they  seemed  like  no- 
thing so  much  as  steady,  mellow  candle-flames, 
burning  there  all  along  the  roads  as  you  look 
over  them  from  the  Downs. 

"Some  of  them  have  burnt  there  untouched 
since  that  last  battle.  They  may  burn  on  for 
centuries  more,  and  yet — half  a  day  of  war  would 
snuff  them  all  out.  ..." 

He  suddenly  gathered  up  the  map  and  thrust  it 
into  his  pocket ;  and  we  got  to  our  feet. 

"Midhurst  and  Petworth,  Amberley,  Bramber, 
Wilmington,  Friston,  Beddingham  and  Glynde  .  .  .  ' 

He  was  chanting  the  names  as  he  went  on  his 
way. 


[80] 


THE  COUNTRY  BREAKFAST 

WHATEVER  may  be  the  fashion  in  town  the 
breakfast  party  is  no  country  institution ; 
and  that  no  doubt  was  why  it  caused  such  excite- 
ment in  the  village  (though  this  we  did  not  know 
until  later) when  we  invited  ourselves  to  breakfast. 
As  we  tramped  dustily  in,  half  an  hour  after  the 
appointed  time,  our  hostess  met  us  in  the  middle 
of  the  road  before  her  door.  She  was  in  a  state 
of  great  excitement  and  distress.  If  you  lived  in 
a  village  and  had  never  before  entertained  a 
breakfast  party  you  would  not  have  been  tran- 
quil. Imagine  her,  living  alone,  with  no  one  to 
share  her  anxieties,  already  past  her  youth  and 
about  to  give  her  first  breakfast  party. 

She  had  waited;  and  we  did  not  come.  The 
tea  was  in  the  pot ;  the  kettle-lid  danced  upon  the 
steam;  and  still  we  did  not  come.  Everything 
was  prepared — that  is  to  say  everything  except 
the  eggs.  She  must,  I  think,  have  looked  fear- 
fully at  them  many  times  in  that  half  hour.  For 
you  can  do  nothing  with  eggs  in  advance.  There 
they  lay,  cold  and  horribly  unready. 

[81] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

I  have  never  heard  of  anyone  being  haunted  by 
an  egg,  but  I  can  conceive  it  as  a  terrible  thing. 
For  there  is  an  awful  expressionless  tranquillity 
about  an  egg.  Even  to  the  process  of  boiling  it  is 
utterly  indifferent.  Boiled  or  raw  it  is  outwardly 
the  same.  To  anyone  in  the  nervous  state  of  that 
good  woman  this  peculiar  indifference  must  have 
become  maddening.  I  can  imagine  her  in  the  end 
wildly  wondering  whether  or  not  she  had  boiled 
them,  and  obsessed  with  a  terrible  longing  to 
break  them  open  and  see. 

It  must  have  been  about  twenty-five  minutes 
after  the  breakfast  hour  that  the  sight  of  those 
eggs  became  more  than  she  could  endure.  Anx- 
iety can  make  us  all  utterly  reckless.  She  could 
wait  no  longer.  She  put  them  on  to  boil.  We 
were  not  in  sight,  yet  she  put  them  on  to  boil; 
and  immediately  a  more  terrible  anxiety  suc- 
ceeded to  the  first.  Would  we  come  before  they 
were  boiled  too  hard  ? 

You  can  understand  now  why  she  met  us  in  the 
street.  Not  until  we  were  seated  and  the  eggs 
cracked  and  found,  after  all,  to  be  still  soft,  was 
peace  again  in  that  house. 

Breakfast  is  the  meal  at  which  anything  might 
happen.  There  is  no  dish  of  which  you  can  say 
beforehand  that  it  will  be  out  of  place  at  break- 

[82] 


THE  COUNTRY  BREAKFAST 

fast.  It  is  the  meal  for  experiments.  Its  very 
name  premises  that  one  may  eat  what  one  likes. 
Supper  is  the  eating  of  a  sop;  lunch  is  but  a  hunk 
of  bread ;  at  tea — one  drinks  tea ;  but  observe  that 
at  breakfast  one  is  committed  only  to  break  one's 
fast ;  the  method  is  not  prescribed  by  the  name, 
and  everyone  may  do  it  according  to  his  choice. 
Mine  is  for  a  varied  and  elaborate  breakfast — a 
breakfast  of  unexpected  dishes,  and  I  read  with 
a  special  delight  of  that  breakfast  beginning  with 
fried  eggs  and  cocks'  combs  which  Brother 
Eusebe  served  to  M.  Chicot  at  the  Priory  of  the 
Jacobins.  But  in  the  country,  where  all  food  has 
a  flavour  of  freshness,  an  early  morning  dew  upon 
it,  which  has  long  since  gone  by  the  time  it 
reaches  our  tables  in  the  town,  an  austere  break- 
fast has  its  own  charm.  To  sit  at  a  table  where  it 
has  never  been  conceived  that  breakfast  could 
consist  of  more  than  eggs  and  bread  and  butter 
is  to  feel  ashamed  of  the  over-decorated  tables  of 
town.  There  must  of  course  be  enough  of  each ; 
they  must  have  their  early-morning  freshness, 
and  then  what  more  could  one  desire  than  this 
virginal  feast?  When  Adrian  found  Richard 
Feverel  at  breakfast  by  the  Solent  Richard  had 
just  eaten  seven  eggs  (that  is  if  we  allow  two  for 
Lucy  as  the  feminine  maximum)  but  we  are  not 

[83] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

all  Meredithian  young  men.  It  is  possible  to  be 
content  with  fewer. 

And  then  we  had  discovered  the  perfect  hostess 
for  such  an  occasion.  From  the  moment  when 
we  stumbled  out  of  the  morning  heat  down  the 
stairs  into  the  dining  room  (it  was  one  of  those 
old  houses  that  have  every  room  on  a  different 
level)  until  the  moment  when  we  set  out  on  the 
road  again  she  did  not  cease  talking.  It  was  not 
one  of  those  treacherous  monologues  with  sudden 
pauses,  abrupt  and  unsuspected  chasms  to  en- 
gulf the  inattentive,  but  a  fresh,  vivacious,  un- 
staying  flood  of  talk  which  neither  got  nor  asked 
for  answers.  It  flowed  and  rippled  over  us.  We 
had  come  in  hungry  and  hot,  and  we  ate  in  tran- 
quillity beneath  its  shelter  as  one  can  sit,  cool, 
dry,  and  luxuriously  lulled  by  the  noise,  under  the 
arch  of  a  waterfall. 

In  town  we  do  not  talk  to  our  friends  of  all  the 
preparations  that  we  might  have  made  to  enter- 
tain them.  Though  why  we  should  not  talk  to 
them  of  these  things  I  do  not  know.  It  is  the  best 
of  natural  good  manners,  the  true  warmth  of 
welcome,  the  most  delicate  flattery — thus  to  let 
one's  guests  share  in  the  reminiscence  of  all  the 
anxieties,  the  preparations,  and  the  thought  for 
their  coming.  This  is  at  once  to  make  them  at 

[84] 


THE  COUNTRY  BREAKFAST 

home.  It  is  most  hospitably  to  open  to  them  not 
only  the  rooms  but  the  very  cupboards  of  the 
house.  So  we  were  made  welcome.  We  heard  of 
all  that  had  been  done,  and  all  that  had  been  said 
in  the  preparation  of  that  breakfast — how  the 
table  had  been  laid  the  night  before  that  all  might 
be  ready  for  the  untimely  feast,  and  how  the 
curious  neighbours  had  dropped  in.  For  it  was 
an  event  without  precedent  in  that  village.  Tea 
drinkings  there  were  in  plenty,  but  no  one  had 
ever  before  given  a  breakfast  party.  There  were 
no  rules  to  follow,  and  so  the  neighbours  came, 
for  unless  they  saw  they  could  not  imagine  how  a 
breakfast  party  was  got  ready. 

At  that  point  I  was  disturbed  for  the  only  time 
in  my  tranquil  eating  of  eggs  and  bread  and 
butter  under  that  sheltering  talk.  I  was  sent  to 
get  the  kettle  from  the  hob  that  my  fourth  cup 
might  be  filled. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  with  all  this  talk 
we  were  neglected,  or  left  to  search  the  table  for 
ourselves.  A  nurse  could  not  have  been  more 
watchful  of  our  wants.  The  cups  were  almost 
taken  from  our  lips  to  be  replenished.  The  eggs 
were  lifted  from  our  plates  and  others  put  in  their 
place  almost  before  our  spoons  had  done  with 
them.  We  wanted  for  nothing.  And  as  she 

[85] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

talked  and  watched  she  broke  a  piece  of  toast  on 
her  plate,  for  she  herself  had  breakfasted  long 
before  we  came  that  she  might  give  undivided 
attention  to  our  entertainment.  With  her  ec- 
centric ways,  her  naive  and  anxious  prepara- 
tions, her  alert  and  hospitable  eye,  her  unceasing 
talk,  I  salute  her  again  as  the  perfect  hostess. 
Even  her  nervousness,  so  candidly  confessed,  had 
but  served  to  put  us  at  our  ease. 

She  waved  us  farewell  as  she  had  welcomed  us, 
standing  in  the  middle  of  the  road  before  her 
door. 


[86] 


THE  THUNDERSTORM 

IT  was  the  full  summertime,  a  hazy  and  still 
*  day.  The  heat  seemed  to  come  not  from  the 
half-hidden  sky  but  from  the  burning  white  road ; 
and  though  it  was  near  noon  the  Downs  were 
grey  and  very  distant.  For  by  day,  even  when 
the  air  is  clear,  their  high  line  seems  far  away, 
mysterious,  and  the  world  beyond  them  scarcely 
to  be  attained.  There  were  no  clouds  in  the  sky, 
but  there  was  no  depth  of  blue  either.  That  hot 
grey  shadow,  the  sure  warning  of  a  storm,  which 
is  flung  by  nothing  and  does  not  move  across  the 
earth  like  the  cool  shadow  of  a  cloud  but  lies 
upon  the  light  itself,  had  passed  between  the 
earth  and  the  sky.  The  coolness  of  the  turf  was 
gone,  and  all  the  colours  seemed  sucked  from 
out  of  the  world.  Only  the  road  was  fiery  white. 
On  such  a  day  of  grey  heat  the  weight  of  many 
years  seems  to  press  upon  the  limbs. 

A  little  after  it  left  the  town,  and  before  it 
opened  out  on  its  great  curve  above  the  valley 
and  turned  towards  the  Downs,  the  road  sank 

[871 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

very  deeply  between  its  banks.  On  this  day 
they  had  the  hard  look  of  walls.  They  threw  no 
shadow,  but  they  seemed  to  hold  all  the  dust 
of  the  road  and  to  gather  into  them  all  the  heat  of 
the  sky.  Out  of  this  prison  the  road  lifted  on  to 
the  curving  shoulder  of  the  hill  with  all  the  water 
meadows  of  the  broad  valley  beneath.  From 
here  we  looked  straight  across  at  the  Downs  and 
saw  the  little  chalk  path  rising  up  them.  In  the 
greyness  and  heavy  silence  the  only  clear  thing 
was  that  high  chalk  path  far  ahead.  By  it  we 
knew  that  we  should  come  to  our  first  breath  of 
coolness  and  a  sudden  sight  of  the  sea.  For  there 
was  no  coolness  at  all  in  the  unshaded  space  of 
the  water-meadows  nor  in  the  dull  and  still  sur- 
face of  the  stream,  but  only  a  hope  of  it  beyond 
that  distant  road. 

We  crossed  the  empty  valley  and  came  to  a 
village  where,  for  the  first  time,  there  were 
shadows  in  which  the  eyes  might  cool  themselves, 
broad  shadows  under  the  beech  trees  and  little 
shadows  under  the  ivy  leaves  of  the  church  tower, 
and  a  shadow,  deep  and  dark  as  a  grave,  within 
the  porch.  Through  a  single  arch  of  trees  across 
the  road  we  looked  forward  at  the  delicate  line 
of  the  Downs.  From  this  road  the  path,  that 
had  been  our  mark  all  across  the  valley,  went  up 

[88] 


THE  THUNDERSTORM 

through  the  turf.  Its  glittering  chalk  surface  was 
without  dust,  and  in  the  smooth  and  calm  face  of 
the  Downs  there  was,  not  coolness,  but  a  relief 
from  the  dust  pall  of  the  road  and  the  weighing 
odour  of  the  heat. 

Already  the  shadow  which  had  lain  all  morning 
on  the  light  was  growing  deeper;  and  the  valley 
now  behind  us  was  very  dim.  The  whole  world, 
that  had  lain  all  morning  as  if  dead  beneath  the 
heat,  seemed  to  be  changing  into  a  grey  ghost  of 
itself,  a  ghost  that  was  growing,  each  minute, 
vaguer  and  mistier,  and  that  presently  would 
dissolve  and  be  blown  away  with  the  first  breath 
of  the  wind.  But  there  was  still  no  wind,  though 
once,  in  the  hot  silence,  a  lonely  flutter,  with  a 
faint  smell  of  salt,  touched  our  faces. 

On  the  crest  of  the  Downs  the  chalk  path 
disappeared  in  the  turf,  as  a  stream  goes  under- 
ground, and  there  we  came  suddenly  on  the  sea. 
Below  us  were  long  empty  valleys,  and  the  last 
broad  reach  of  the  river,  dull  and  hard  as  lead, 
and  dark  houses  and  the  masts  of  ships  at  its 
mouth,  and  beyond  these  the  sea,  grey  like  the 
land  but  with  a  faint  scatter  of  the  gold  dust  of 
the  sun. 

Away  to  the  eastwards,  where  the  sky  was 
growing  darker,  rolled  the  smoke  of  a  gorse  fire. 

[89] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

It  was  the  only  thing  that  moved  in  all  the  press- 
ing stillness.  Within  the  smoke  glowed  broad 
orange  flames,  and  within  these  flames  other  and 
smaller  flames,  red  like  holly  berries,  sharp  and 
curled  like  holly  leaves.  At  their  vicious  touch 
each  great  gorse  bush  fell,  with  one  rending 
crackle,  into  grey  ashes,  and  was  left  a  black  and 
twisted  skeleton.  The  smoke  moved  slowly 
along  the  Downs,  and  as  it  rose  disappeared  into 
the  greyness  above,  so  that  from  those  great- 
bellied  clouds  of  smoke  seemed  to  have  come  that 
shadow  which  filled  the  whole  circle  of  the  sky, 
and  those  orange  and  red  flames  to  be  the  fires 
beneath  the  cauldron  of  the  storm. 

It  came  stealthy  and  disguised  upon  us  from 
beyond  the  rolling  smoke.  It  came  with  no  crash 
and  parade  of  its  forces.  There  were  no  clouds  in 
the  sky,  but  only  darkness.  No  wind  blew,  and 
the  first  sounds  of  thunder  were  like  the  unin- 
tended muttering  and  shuffle  of  a  great  crowd 
striving  to  move  in  silence. 

These  empty  spaces  of  the  Downs  are  without 
shelter,  and  we  waited  on  the  open  turf.  Below 
us  at  the  shallow  head  of  a  valley  a  flock  of  sheep 
was  gathered,  so  close  and  still  that  in  the  grey 
light  it  was  like  a  slope  of  the  dun-coloured  turf. 
Then  at  last  the  storm  began  to  take  shape  above 

[90] 


THE  THUNDERSTORM 

the  sea.  The  darkness  gathered  and  sank,  com- 
ing out  of  the  sky  into  a  long  line  of  clouds  that 
hung  low  over  the  very  edge  of  the  shore.  These 
clouds  were  black  above,  and  below  the  colour 
of  bronze.  The  shore  was  black  and  desolate  in 
their  shadow,  but  in  the  narrow  space  between 
the  two  the  sea  shone  with  a  pale  and  distant 
light.  So  clear  was  it  and  so  far  away  under  the 
dark  and  evil  brow  of  the  storm  that  it  seemed  as 
if  suddenly  we  should  see  through  it,  small  and 
clear,  the  shores  and  houses  of  France. 

The  line  of  the  clouds  sank  lower  and  lower,  as 
if  they  would  fall  bodily  upon  the  shore  and  crush 
it  beneath  their  bronze  shields.  Then  the  storm 
broke  across  that  narrow  bar  of  the  pale  light  of 
the  sea,  and  the  lightning  stabbed  furiously  out  of 
the  clouds  at  the  shore.  There  was  the  darkness 
of  the  clouds  above  and  the  darkness  of  their 
shadow  on  the  shore  below;  and  across  that 
serene  light  between  them  ran  the  crooked  and 
vicious  flames.  Then  the  rain  fell,  and  the  rain 
drops  were  so  great  that  they  shone  in  the  dim- 
ness like  silver.  The  cornfield  that  filled  the 
bottom  of  the  valley  moved  a  little  to  the  rain 
and  looked  like  a  mild  green  lake.  The  sheep  did 
not  stir.  They  had  faded  altogether  into  the 
colour  of  the  turf.  There  were  no  trees  to  bend 

[91] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

and  sway  in  terror  before  the  anger  of  the  storm, 
and  the  Downs  lay  under  its  darkness  as  easy 
and  untroubled  as  a  pool  when  a  shadow  passes 
over  it. 

The  rain  fell,  and  it  seemed  as  if  the  world, 
which  had  been  dissolving  under  the  heat  into  a 
grey  ghost,  would  now  be  washed  away.  Then 
the  rain  ceased ;  the  heavy  brow  of  the  sky  lifted, 
and  the  storm  passed;  but  that  hot  ominous 
shadow  still  lay  on  the  light  of  the  day,  and  some- 
where beyond  it,  unseen,  the  storm  waited. 

It  had  left  the  world  utterly  spent.  The  rain 
had  washed  from  it  the  last  sign  of  life.  The 
last  colour  was  gone.  The  bitter  red  flames 
of  the  gorse  fire  were  quenched,  its  smoke  had 
disappeared,  and  the  dark  skeletons  of  the  gorse 
bushes  stood  up  from  the  turf,  darker  and  more 
gaunt  than  before.  The  sea  no  longer  sparkled 
faintly,  nor  shone  with  that  pale  clear  light.  It 
lay  beneath  the  even  grey  sky,  as  leaden  and 
motionless  as  the  land. 

So  the  day  passed,  weary  and  without  joy. 
The  day  passed  and  the  night  came,  hot  and  still, 
beneath  a  sky  where  no  lights  shone,  an  unseen 
sky,  that  seemed,  so  heavy  was  the  night,  as  if  it 
might  have  been  within  hand's  reach  above  one's 
head. 

[92] 


THE  THUNDERSTORM 

At  last,  under  the  darkness,  the  storm  crept 
stealthily  away.  Suddenly  a  single  star  shone 
out,  clear,  beautiful,  and  distant,  and  at  the  sight 
of  it  the  sky  seemed  suddenly  to  lift.  It  was  as 
if  a  window  had  been  opened  in  a  hot  room  and 
the  wind  had  blown  in. 


[93] 


THE  LITTLE  STREAM 

THERE  was  a  man  in  one  of  the  fairy  tales  who 
could  hear  the  grass  growing — a  wonderful 
thing  to  do,  but  how  he  must  have  loved  the 
sudden,  awesome  silence  of  midsummer  when  all 
the  hay  was  cut !  Yet  even  without  his  terrible 
gift  there  is  one  living  thing  which  one  can  both 
see  and  hear  as  it  grows,  and  that  is  a  little 
stream.  Nothing  in  the  world  grows  so  noisily, 
or  so  fast,  or  with  such  delight  to  be  growing. 

One  long  warm  afternoon  in  the  Cumberland 
hills  I  went  all  the  way  with  a  stream  as  it  grew, 
down  a  winding  valley  from  the  summit  of  High 
Street — a  lonely  valley  with  great  slopes  of  deep 
green  bracken,  with  grey  rocks  and  scars  of  red 
earth — and  in  among  its  tufts  of  grass  the  deli- 
cate lance-heads  of  rushes,  brown  as  the  fresh 
turned  soil,  and  flashing  green  mosses,  and  the 
blood-red  leaves  of  the  Venus  fly-trap,  an  empty 
sun-bleached  valley,  but  with  all  the  colours 
hidden  somewhere  in  it. 

Among  the  scatter  of  grey  rocks  at  the  valley 
[95] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

head,  in  a  crumbled  black  cup  of  earth,  was  the 
beginning  of  the  little  stream,  and  round  the 
cup  lay  mosses,  exquisitely  fine,  whose  tendrils 
floated  away  and  at  a  touch  seemed  to  dissolve. 
Out  of  this  cradle  cup  of  earth  the  little  stream 
crept  and  felt  its  way,  like  a  blind  kitten  taking 
its  first  steps.  It  spread  hesitatingly  among  the 
moss  and  grey  pebbles,  and  then,  as  if  frightened 
to  be  abroad,  slipped  under  ground  again.  But 
it  soon  got  courage,  and  up  it  came,  and  fell  with 
a  splash  into  a  little  brown  pool. 

There  is  no  word  to  describe  that  first  call  of 
the  little  stream.  It  was  something  like  the 
tinkle  of  glass,  and  something  like  the  chirrup  of 
an  insect,  but  really  like  nothing  but  itself — that 
first  sound  of  new-born  water.  Nor  is  there  any 
little  sound  among  the  hills  so  beautiful  except, 
perhaps,  the  clear  ring  of  tiny  stones  on  the 
screes.  So  the  little  stream  came  to  life  and 
started  on  its  way. 

At  first  it  flowed  very  carefully.  Its  waters 
came  most  delicately  over  the  stones.  They 
seemed  to  flicker  like  a  candle  flame,  and  to  be  as 
easy  to  snuff  out.  But  soon  it  cut  its  narrow 
channel  deep,  and  the  long  grasses  stretched 
above  it,  and  its  courage  rose,  and  its  voice  grew 
louder.  Then  it  fell  over  its  first  rock  with  the 

[96] 


THE  LITTLE  STREAM 

deep  sound  of  full  water.  That  was  the  second 
call  of  the  little  stream.  It  was  not  only  alive 
now,  but  glad  to  be  alive.  It  felt  its  own 
strength;  and  suddenly  it  went  onward  faster 
than  any  feet  could  keep  pace  with  it. 

A  river  is  always  inhuman.  Beautiful  or  sad, 
boisterous  or  lazy,  stately  or  terrible,  or  any  one 
of  a  thousand  different  things  it  may  be ;  but  it 
is  always  inhuman.  For  its  energy  is  without 
effort.  It  flows  on,  and  neither  knows  nor  cares 
whither,  or  why,  or  how  it  flows.  But  that  little 
stream  was  very  human.  It  seemed  to  love  what 
it  was  doing.  I  could  see  its  delight.  I  could  see 
it  stretching  its  silver  sinews  as  it  hurried.  Only 
to  be  moving  was  its  desire.  It  cared  for  nothing 
else:  "Faster  then,  faster  then,  faster  then,"  was 
its  song.  It  hurried  and  spluttered.  It  tripped 
and  it  tumbled.  It  was  up  and  on  again.  Its 
waters  rushed  along  the  smooth  rocks  like  boys 
hurrying  down  a  slide.  It  plunged  from  pool  to 
pool  like  a  diver  throwing  up  his  heels.  It  cared 
nothing  for  the  tranquil  hills  round  it,  nor  for  the 
stones  in  its  course,  nor  the  grass  tufts  on  its 
banks ;  and  if  it  stopped  in  a  quieter  pool  it  was 
only  for  a  moment  before  it  hurried  on  from  rock 
to  hollow,  from  grey  pool  to  brown.  At  first  we 
had  gone  together,  it  and  I,  but  now  it  was  with 

[971 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

me,  and  far  ahead  of  me,  and  tumbling  behind 
me,  all  at  the  same  time;  and  I  knew  then  that 
we  were  near  the  end  of  our  companionship. 

With  a  last  plunge  the  little  stream  fell  into  one 
of  those  beautiful  pools  which  are  neither  grey 
nor  green,  but  a  colour  of  their  own,  a  colour  still 
without  a  name,  the  colour  of  perfect  purity. 

There  the  little  stream  ended.  It  flowed  out  of 
that  pool,  but  it  was  changed.  It  was  a  burn  or  a 
beck,  or  what  you  will,  but  it  was  no  longer  a 
little  stream.  It  flowed  on,  with  rapids  and  falls, 
by  stagnant  back-waters  where  the  flies  skated, 
and  by  greater  pools  where  men  fished  and 
bathed.  It  flowed  on  without  effort,  and  it 
neither  knew  nor  cared  whither  or  how  it  flowed. 

It  is  said  sometimes  of  the  hills  that  they  defy 
time,  but  they  are  merely  indifferent  to  it.  It  is 
the  rivers  which  defy  time,  for  they  are  always 
changing  and  always  the  same;  they  can  be  all 
ages  as  they  will.  They  can  rollick  in  youth  and 
ripple  placidly  in  middle  age,  and  drag  their  steps 
among  their  stones,  old  and  decrepit;  and  they 
can  do  these  things  in  any  order  they  will,  and 
do  them  over  and  over  again.  They  can  be  old 
before  they  leave  their  first  valley,  and  young 
again  the  moment  before  they  plunge  into  the 
sea.  But  a  little  stream  cannot  do  these  things. 

[98] 


THE  LITTLE  STREAM 

It  cannot  defy  time.  Once  it  has  ceased  to  be  a 
little  stream  it  can  never  become  one  again.  And 
this  little  stream,  my  companion,  came  to  an  end 
in  this  pool  which  was  as  clear  and  serene  as 
untroubled  sleep. 


[991 


THE  EXILE 

ITE  had  the  peasant's  great  attachment  to  his 
*  *  soil.  To  him  Belgium  was  that  acre  in 
Brabant  which  was  his  garden.  He  was  a  tree 
taken  from  the  earth.  His  patriotism  was  not  an 
idea  on  which  even  in  exile,  he  could  feed  the  soul. 
Still  less  was  it  an  affair  of  governments  or  men. 
It  was  for  him  home. 

Cest  la  douce  folie 

De  recolter  ce  qu'on  seme, 

Et  Tabsurd  passion 

De  posseder  ce  qu'on  aime. 

It  was  literally  of  the  earth. 

He  was  a  man  of  great  ignorance  and  great 
curiosity.  Both  were  singularly  attractive.  Of 
England  he  had  known  nothing  at  all.  He  saw  it 
for  the  first  time  on  a  railway  map  at  Ostend 
during  his  flight,  and  wondered  if  so  small  a  place 
could  offer  him  any  safety.  Yet  even  this  naive 
astonishment  did  not  get  the  better  of  his  thrifty 
good  sense.  He  met  English  soldiers  as  they 
landed,  and  changed  his  Belgian  for  their  English 

[101] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

money,  so  that  in  the  end  he  came  to  England 
with  a  pound's  worth  of  English  pennies  in  his 
bag. 

The  sea  he  had  never  seen  before.  At  any 
other  time  to  have  embarked  on  it  would  have 
been  an  awful  adventure.  But  at  that  moment 
with  the  terror  behind  he  would,  he  said,  have 
set  out  for  America  without  a  thought.  When  he 
was  settled  in  an  English  sea-side  town  the  first 
fresh  wonder  of  it  returned  to  him.  The  tides 
were  a  perpetual  marvel,  and  he  would  hardly 
credit  it  that  the  wind  could  make  the  waves — 
though  the  rumour  of  such  things  had  reached  his 
village.  He  delighted  to  talk  of  all  these  won- 
ders. Indeed  all  natural  science  delighted  him. 
He  could  not  hear  enough  of  the  earth  and  the 
stars.  He  was  untravelled  but  he  had  a  continual 
and  eager  curiosity.  He  had  that  upstanding 
quality  of  mind  which  is  neither  silent  nor  over- 
come, but  remains  always  interested  and  critical 
before  any  new  thing.  And  so  when,  in  middle 
age,  he  was  rudely  thrust  into  this  first  great 
journey  of  his  life,  when  he  found  himself  with 
his  family,  a  little  money,  and  a  single  bag  in  an 
unknown  country,  he  was  neither  abashed  nor 
fumbling.  He  carried  himself  as  he  should. 
There  was  something  singularly  engaging  in  the 

[102] 


THE  EXILE 

contrasts  of  his  character,  the  untravelled  igno- 
rance which  he  never  tried  to  conceal,  his  tact  and 
good  sense  as  of  a  travelled  man. 

On  men  and  manners  he  had  his  ideas.  Some 
of  them,  he  said,  he  kept  to  himself,  in  his  village. 
They  would  have  been  looked  at  askance.  They 
would  have  come  to  the  ears  of  the  cure.  His 
delight  was  great  when  he  found  that  these  ideas 
which  were  his  own,  which  he  dared  not  share, 
were  the  ideas  of  many  men. 

Romance  he  did  not  understand.  To  him  it 
was  the  feuilleton  of  a  halfpenny  paper.  The 
world,  he  thought,  was  already  so  full  of  wonders 
to  be  discovered,  like  the  waves  and  the  tides, 
that  he  could  not  understand  why  men  should 
trouble  to  invent  things.  When  Dumas  was 
brought  (from  the  very  small  French  shelf  of  the 
local  library)  he  put  him  aside  with  a  shrug. 
They  were  romances,  he  supposed.  His  wife 
might  read  them.  For  himself,  he  had  not  the 
taste.  But  in  the  absence  of  anything  more 
scientific  he  consented  to  look  at  La  Bruyere's 
"Characters,"  and  was  greatly  entertained.  He 
showed  a  child's  delight  when  he  found  among 
them  reflections  which  he  had  already  made  for 
himself  in  his  observation  of  men. 

Yet  though  Romance  was  hidden  from  him  he 
[103! 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

spoke  of  his  village,  of  the  characters  and  the 
fields  and  the  woods,  the  labours  and  the  plays, 
of  that  little  place — and  of  his  delight  in  them — 
all  unconsciously  with  the  poet's  speech.  He  had 
the  poet's  speech  because  he  had  never  lost  the 
eagerness  of  a  child.  He  loved  his  tools  almost  as 
living  things.  He  possessed  his  house  as  a  child 
would  possess  a  toy  house.  He  talked  of  all  that 
it  contained  like  a  child  fondling  its  toys.  And 
so,  though  he  did  not  know  it,  that  village  be- 
came as  he  spoke  like  a  place  in  a  book,  clear, 
detached,  complete,  touched  with  humour  and 
enchantment. 

There  was  his  friendship  with  the  burgomaster, 
the  great  man  of  the  village ;  there  was  the  village 
concert  where  the  famous  singer  from  Brussels, 
spending  her  holiday  in  the  country  and  singing 
by  great  condescension,  was  unapplauded,  while 
the  village  comedian  brought  down  the  house. 
He  acted  the  little  scene  of  the  gaping  uncompre- 
hension  of  the  villagers  changing  to  broad 
delight. 

There  were  the  days  that  he  spent  in  the  winter 
woods  cutting  fuel,  and  his  happiness  in  the  mere 
presence  of  the  earth  and  the  trees.  There  was 
that  summer  evening  when  he  heard  an  unseen 
horn,  far  away  in  the  stillness,  playing  a  mourn- 

[104] 


THE  EXILE 

ful  old  hunting  air,  and  he  climbed  to  the  roof  of 
his  house  with  his  ochrina  and,  sitting  there, 
played  it  back  through  the  dusk.  He  described 
it  until  you  almost  smelt  the  smoke  of  the  even- 
ing going  up  from  the  fields. 

But  it  was  only  his  own  soil  that  wakened  the 
poet  in  this  exile  who  did  not  know  Romance. 
He  marvelled  at  the  sea,  but  at  the  woods  and 
fields  and  hills  of  England  he  looked  with  an 
unseeing  eye.  They  were  not  his  home. 

Many  men  are  indolent  in  misfortune,  but  he 
rose  briskly  to  its  opportunities.  If  he  did  not  go 
travelling  by  his  own  choice,  he  would  at  least 
not  refuse  its  benefits.  His  curiosity  and  his 
pleasure  in  new  things  were  his  support.  Yet  at 
heart  he  remained  an  exile.  It  was  only  as  he 
worked  in  a  garden  that  he  felt  himself  once 
again  in  Brabant.  Then,  as  he  turned  the  earth, 
he  was  near  his  home;  but  the  thought  of  it 
troubled  him  always.  What  would  become  of 
that  square  grey  house,  with  the  garden  and  the 
clump  of  osiers,  on  its  little  eminence  in  the 
Brabant  plain?  They  were  more  than  worldly 
goods.  They  were  his  Belgium. 

He  was  safe,  cared  for,  prosperous,  but  "la 
douce  folie"  drove  him  home.  He  knew  at  least, 
when  he  set  out,  that  his  house  had  not  been 

[105] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

destroyed.  But  how  much  more  of  the  rest,  that 
he  went  to  seek  did  he  find — of  the  village  and 
all  that  pleasant  company  of  which  he  used  to 
speak  ? 

He  might  have  been  less  an  exile  if  he  had 
stayed  in  England,  and  nearer  to  his  old  home, 
talking  and  dreaming  of  it,  and  turning  the  earth 
in  an  English  garden. 


[106] 


SHEEP  ON  THE  DOWNS 

F  all  the  figures  of  speech  which  the  Bible  has 
made  most  familiar  in  our  mouths  none  is 
stranger  than  the  Lamb  of  God.  We  have  for- 
gotten in  it  the  literal  meaning  of  lamb ;  we  have 
forgotten  the  original  Hebrew  meaning  of  the 
burnt  offering  of  a  lamb  to  God.  That  phrase  has 
been  lifted  far  away  from  all  that  it  once  was,  and 
now,  beautifully  but  strangely,  it  expresses  for 
us,  through  the  gentleness  of  a  timid  and  stupid 
animal,  the  most  courageous  and  wonderful 
gentleness  in  the  world. 

Language  is  full  of  these  words  that  lead 
double  lives.  It  is  indeed  one  of  the  great  proofs 
that  words  do  indeed  live.  Those  who  work  with 
them  work  with  living  things.  Let  us  remember 
this  and  use  them  with  reverence.  Neither  wood 
nor  stone,  gold,  nor  the  richest  colour,  nor  any 
other  of  the  things  that  men  use  in  their  arts  is 
living  but  only  words. 

If  one  wanted  any  other  proof  that  words  are 
living  things  it  is  that  the  language  is  full  of  dead 

[107] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

words,  words  that  men  have  killed  by  using  them 
too  much,  or  by  misusing  them.  But  many  of 
them  get  no  rest  even  in  death,  for  men  who  do 
not  know  that  they  are  dead — since  they  never 
realised  that  they  could  live — drag  their  corpses 
about  and  hang  them  up  on  their  sentences,  as 
savages  decorate  their  huts  with  scalps  and  bones. 

And  we  all  take  up  our  pens,  and  order  the 
words  out,  and  turn  them  and  twist  them,  and 
hustle  and  push  them,  until  we  have  them  where 
we  think  that  they  should  be.  We  even  play 
tricks  with  them,  and,  in  our  assurance,  tell  them 
to  mean  things  that  they  never  meant  before. 
And  these  words  that  we  so  lightly  use  were  living 
centuries  before  us,  and  will  be  living  long  after 
we  are  gone — long  after  what  we  did  with  them, 
whether  good  or  bad,  has  been  forgotten.  They 
are  living  things.  Associations  have  gathered 
about  them.  Great  men  have  used  them,  and 
they  have  lived  on  enriched  by  that  companion- 
ship. They  have  memories  fuller  than  the  mem- 
ory of  any  man.  To  those  who  have  the  ears 
they  speak  of  a  thousand  things  that  they  know 
and  of  a  thousand  places  where  they  have  been. 

We  pick  up  this  or  that  piece  of  stuff  and  say, 
"This  was  part  of  the  dress  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
How  strange  to  think  that  she  actually  wore  it ! 

[io81 


SHEEP  ON  THE  DOWNS 

It  makes  one  realise  that  she  was  a  living  woman 
more  than  all  the  history  books."  Or  we  look 
round  a  panelled  room,  and  murmur,  "What  a 
funny  old  bed.  There  were  no  spring  mattresses 
in  those  days,  but  how  wonderful  to  think  that 
Charles  I.  actually  slept  in  it.  He  must  have 
looked  out  of  this  window  standing  where  we  are 
now  before  he  went  down  to  breakfast — but 
perhaps  they  didn't  have  breakfast  then.  Really 
one  wouldn't  be  surprised  to  see  him  come  in  at 
that  door."  Or  we  stand  in  front  of  a  Crusader's 
sword:  "To  think  that  perhaps  this  black  mark  is 
the  blood  of  a  man  who  died  centuries  ago.  This 
does  make  one  feel  the  past.  I  wish  they  did  not 
say  we  are  not  to  touch." 

But  no  one  ever  thinks  in  this  way  of  words 
or  remembers  how  old  they  are,  or  treats  them  as 
living  things,  things  which  are  not  forbidden  to 
him  to  touch,  but  which  he  may  use,  and  which 
unite  him  with  many  centuries,  and  with  great 
men  long  since  dead.  No  man  has  ever  said  to 
another,  "Sir,  that  word  you  have  just  spoken 
(though  you  have  not  used  it  in  quite  the  right 
sense)  gave  much  delight  to  Chaucer.  You  have 
only  to  see  how  he  used  it  here  and  used  it  there, 
to  know  that  he  must  have  loved  the  very  sound 
of  it."  Or,  "Speak  that  word  with  some  rever- 

[109] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

ence.  You  can  see,  reading  it  in  such  a  play,  that 
it  was  like  a  trumpet  to  Shakespeare.  It  stirred 
him  to  the  heart.  When  he  wrote  it  down  he  was 
looking  out  across  all  England,  and  remembering 
his  love  for  the  fields  and  woods  and  river  of  his 
own  home.  He  saw  men  going  out  to  die  for  her. 
He  must  have  felt,  for  that  moment  when  he 
wrote  it,  as  if  his  quill  feathered  an  arrow  which 
he  was  fitting  to  a  long  bow.  Do  not  use  that 
word  ignobly.  It  may  be  a  poor  thing  to  you,  but 
it  has  lived  greatly." 

Though  we  do  not  speak  in  this  way,  nor 
remember  the  history  of  words ;  nor  think  of  them 
as  uniting  us  to  our  past ;  nor  feel  that  great  men 
live  in  them,  as  much  as  in  the  clothes  they  wore 
or  the  swords  they  carried  or  the  rooms  where 
they  slept,  yet  unconsciously  we  are  under  the 
influence  of  their  rich  companionships.  These 
indeed  do  change  them.  So  that  not  only  may 
the  same  word  mean  entirely  different  things  and 
we  not  feel  it  strange,  but  the  very  sound  of  it 
be  changed  to  our  ears,  and,  according  to  its 
meaning,  be  noble  or  mean,  beautiful  or  ugly. 
It  is  only  the  very  childish  or  very  primitive 
mind  which  feels  it  comic  that  one  word  should 
mean  two  different  things,  or  be  reminded  of  the 
one  when  he  hears  the  other. 

[no] 


SHEEP  ON  THE  DOWNS 

So  it  is  with  this  strange  word  "lamb."  I  still 
have  a  well-inked  school-book  called  "Chosen 
English"  in  which,  above  the  essay  on  Chimney 
Sweepers,  some  unknown  hand  wrote,  after  the 
word  "Lamb,"  "And  Mint  Sauce."  I  believe 
that  I  was  annoyed  at  the  time;  for  that  essay, 
with  its  rich  and  coloured  quaintness,  was  a  new 
country  of  words  for  me;  but  now  I  treasure  the 
book  for  the  sake  of  that  annotation. 

Lambs  of  the  flock,  lamb  and  mint  sauce, 
Charles  Lamb,  the  Lamb  of  God — there  is  no 
word  in  all  the  language  so  modestly  born,  that 
has  lived  such  a  variety  of  wonderful  lives  and 
has  been  so  enriched  and  ennobled  by  its  past. 

Yet  there  is  another  reason  why  that  last  and 
most  singular  phrase,  the  Lamb  of  God,  might 
suddenly  and  fantastically  be  chosen  by  a  mind 
which  knew  nothing  of  its  past,  to  describe  a 
gentle  God  come  to  earth  among  men.  For  liter- 
ally, as  one  looks  at  a  flock  of  sheep  on  the 
Downs,  it  might  be  something  come  from  the  sky. 
There  is  nothing  on  earth  more  like  the  gentle, 
wandering,  white  clouds  of  summer.  So  do  the 
sheep  wander  across  the  green  curves  of  the 
Downs  which  are  as  smooth  as  the  hollows  of  the 
sky  above.  They  move  exactly  like  the  summer 
clouds,  never  still  yet  never  hurrying,  always 

[in] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

changing  yet  always  the  same,  dividing,  uniting, 
wandering  on,  as  gentle  and  unconcerned  as  a 
cloud,  until  they  slip  over  the  crest  of  a  hill  and 
are  gone,  as  if,  like  a  cloud,  the  sun  had  drawn 
them  away.  And  the  grey  sheep-dogs  pass  in 
and  out  among  them,  moving  them  this  way  and 
that,  turning  them  and  guiding  them,  all  uncon- 
scious, like  little  puffs  of  dark  wind  blowing 
through  the  clouds. 

On  this  day  that  I  have  in  mind  we  were  com- 
ing down  one  of  the  deep  coombes  above  Firle, 
where  the  chalk  path  went  between  banks  of  my 
lady's  bedstraw,  and  in  the  fields  that  filled  the 
bottom  of  the  hollow  was  a  shepherd  with  his 
flock.  The  sheep  were  gathered  in  a  dark  patch, 
rather  deep  in  growth,  and  the  shepherd  stood 
beyond,  an  old  man  who  moved  very  stiff  and 
slow.  Then  his  high  harsh,  and,  as  it  seemed, 
scarcely  human  voice  came  up  to  us,  and  sud- 
denly his  dog  had  split  the  flock,  as  the  wind  will 
suddenly  split  the  clouds  on  a  stormy  day  right 
through  to  the  sun. 

Sheep  feed  so  quietly,  move  so  suddenly  when 
the  dog  moves,  and  stop  so  abruptly  when  he  has 
passed,  that  they  seem  to  have  a  very  great 
speed,  and  this  change  from  utter  peace  to  fu- 
rious movement,  and  back  to  peace  again,  is  as 

[112] 


SHEEP  ON  THE  DOWNS 

awesome  as  the  sudden  coming  and  going  of  the 
wind  round  a  house  on  a  still  night.  The  dog 
seems  to  run  with  such  savagery,  the  sheep  to 
fly  with  such  terror,  and  then — the  dog  is  sitting 
quietly  on  his  haunches,  and  the  sheep  are  feed- 
ing again  as  though  through  the  whole  day  they 
had  not  moved  more  than  a  step  at  a  time,  nor 
lifted  their  heads  from  cropping.  It  is  like  the 
beginning  of  a  sudden  tragedy,  and  the  stillness 
afterwards,  but  the  tragic  act  itself  left  out.  And 
all  the  while  the  master  of  the  show  stood  at  the 
back  not  moving,  and  we  heard  the  high  distant 
sound  of  his  voice  but  no  intelligible  words. 

Then  he  counted  his  flock,  and  the  dog  gath- 
ered it  together  again,  and  it  drifted  away  until  a 
curve  of  the  hillside  hid  it,  the  dog  moving  like  a 
shadow  on  the  turf  and  the  sheep  like  a  wander- 
ing cloud. 


[113] 


ROADS  OF  WAR 

IT  was  in  a  mining  village  in  the  north  of 
France,  and  troops  were  going  through, 
stumbling  and  splashing  and  singing  and  then 
falling  suddenly  into  silence.  The  road  was 
horribly  worn,  with  deep  holes  full  of  black  liquid 
mud,  yet  on  this  windy  autumn  afternoon  it  was 
a  strange  and  wonderful  road.  Just  beyond  the 
village  it  rose  a  little  from  the  flatness  and  made 
a  firm  ridge  against  the  sky,  and  along  the  ridge 
and  across  the  road  the  rain  was  blowing  in 
sudden  silver  gusts.  When  they  passed  the  air 
was  very  clear,  and  it  looked  as  though  from  that 
road,  ending  abrupt  and  clean  at  the  top  of  the 
ridge,  one  could  step  straight  into  the  clouds. 

I  had  been  watching  the  road  for  some  time 
when  I  saw  the  Frenchman  standing  close  under 
the  wall  of  a  house  across  the  village  street.  I 
saw  him  when  he  waved  to  one  of  our  men.  He 
looked  to  be  over  middle  age — of  solid  and 
rounded  figure  with  a  heavy  spade  beard — but 
when  I  crossed  and  spoke  to  him,  and  he  turned, 

[115] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

I  saw  only  the  youth  of  his  eyes,  and,  as  he  spoke, 
of  his  vivacious  hands. 

"What  am  I  doing,"  said  he,  "in  the  wind  and 
the  rain  ?  I  watch  the  troops  and  the  road.  I  am 
a  lover  of  roads,"  and  he  smiled.  Then  he  drew 
himself  up.  "I  have  worked  on  the  roads,"  he 
said, "  I  was  of  those  who  worked  on  the  road  that 
saved  France;"  and  at  that  he  crossed  himself. 

A  battalion  went  by  and  we  two  stood  watch- 
ing it.  As  the  last  company  passed  over  the 
ridge  the  rain  blew  down  again  and  hid  the  men. 
It  came  with  the  suddenness  of  a  door  closing 
behind  them. 

"A  few  miles,  and  the  road  ends,  is  it  not  so?" 
said  the  Frenchman. 

"Yes,"  said  I.  "Before  very  long  they'll  go 
underground." 

"And  yet,"  he  said,  "to  look  at  it  you  would 
think  it  never  ended,  that  road." 

The  rain  gust  had  passed  and  the  ridge  stood 
up  against  the  low  clouds.  I  was  thinking  of 
those  roads  across  the  Downs  that  you  see  many 
miles  away,  white  in  the  green  turf,  that  seem  to 
end  suddenly  at  the  steps  of  the  sky.  But  the 
Frenchman  was  thinking  of  other  things. 

"You  might  cross  Europe  by  that  road,"  he 
said.  "Such  roads  are  great  roads.  No  one 


ROADS  OF  WAR 

knows  how  far  one  may  go  by  them ;  even  the  sea 
cannot  stop  them.  Your  old  roads  in  England, 
are  they  not  after  all  ours  ?  The  Romans  made 
them  for  you.  They  are  the  roads  of  Gaul  that 
went  on  and  crossed  England  as  if  your  channel 
had  not  been  there." 

He  raised  his  eyebrows  as  if  he  were  waiting  to 
see  what  I  should  say  to  that. 

"But  there  are  others,"  I  said;  "some  that 
were  there  even  before  your  roadmakers  came 
from  Gaul."  And  I  told  him  of  the  old  turf  road 
from  Winchester  to  Canterbury  and  then  of  a 
warm  summer  road  lifting  and  falling  over  the 
feet  of  the  Downs,  a  rambling,  winding,  beautiful 
road,  with  red  villages  and  beech  trees  and  tower- 
ing hedges  all  flowers — such  hedges  as  do  not 
grow  in  France.  As  I  talked  I  could  almost  smell 
its  clean  and  kindly  dust. 

The  Frenchman  was  staring  up  that  straight 
road  as  I  talked.  When  I  finished  he  turned  and 
looked  at  me,  an  odd  look  that  was  half  amuse- 
ment, half  surprise. 

"Ah — it  is  so  that  you  think  of  roads,"  said 
he;  "but  you  must  understand  that  we  have 
suffered  on  the  roads,  we  French. ' 

He  paused  for  a  moment,  as  if  searching  for 
what  he  wanted  to  say. 

["7] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

"Look,"  he  went  on;  "they  are  to  us  what  the 
sea  is  to  you.  We  have  laid  our  bones  at  the  road- 
side. I  could  tell  you  tales  of  the  roads.  Three 
generations  of  us  have  tales  to  tell  of  them. 

"When  I  was  little  and  he  was  very  old,  my 
grandfather  used  to  tell  me  a  tale  of  the  road — 
the  road  from  Brussels  to  Charleroi,  the  last  road 
that  the  Great  Army  travelled.  He  was  only  a 
boy  when  he  went  by  it,  but  it  was  in  his  memory 
after  he  had  forgotten  nearly  everything  else. 
He  would  tell  me  how  he  left  the  road,  worn  out, 
and  lay  for  the  night  in  a  field ;  and  all  that  night 
he  heard  the  army  hurrying  by  on  that  road. 
'Like  the  noise  of  a  river  in  flood/  he  would  say, 
and  I  could  see  his  old  hands  tremble  'like  the 
Isere' — for  that  was  the  river  I  knew.  It  is 
always  grey  and  tumbling.  He  told  the  tale 
always  in  the  same  way — for  he  was  then  a  very 
old  man — until  I  saw  that  road  as  half  road,  half 
river,  as  a  road  with  a  river  pouring  down  it — I 
knew  not  what — and  men  were  struggling  in  it, 
as  once  I  had  seen  a  man  struggle  in  the  Isere 
under  the  white  bridges.  But  that  road  haunted 
me! 

"And  my  father  would  tell  his  tale  of  the 
roads.  They  would  talk  together,  he  and  old 
grandfather,  and  he  would  shake  his  head,  for 

[118] 


ROADS  OF  WAR 

the  road  he  knew  was  from  Metz  to  Verdun.  He 
had  seen  the  Emperor  ride  out  on  that  road  from 
Gravelotte,  on  his  way  back  to  Verdun,  and  when 
he  saw  his  face — so  he  would  tell  the  story — he 
said,  'It  is  finished/  All  France  believed  then  in 
Bazaine,  but  when  he  saw  the  Emperor's  face 
that  day  he  said,  "It  is  finished/  And  that  was 
before  Rezonville  was  fought.  He  would  tell  us 
of  that  battle.  He  would  tell  us  how  they  fought 
for  that  road,  the  great  road  from  Metz  to  Ver- 
dun, lest  the  Prussians  should  cross  it  and  cut 
them  off  from  France,  and  how  in  the  afternoon 
they  drove  the  Prussians  back  across  that  road, 
and  had  them  beaten,  if  only  they  had  known. 

"'If  only  we  had  known/  he  would  say  sadly, 
and  then  his  face  would  grow  eager.  '  But  French 
armies  will  go  again  by  that  road  from  Verdun 
to  Metz/  he  would  say.  '  Do  not  forget,  you  may 
go  with  them/  And  he  would  describe  a  little 
wood  with  wide  clearings,  by  the  roadside  where 
they  drove  the  Germans  out.  (It  was  there  that 
he  killed  his  German,  fighting  hand  to  hand.) 
He  would  describe  it  very  carefully  that  I,  when 
I  went  by  that  road  to  capture  Metz,  might  know 
it  again. 

"And  so  when  I  shovelled  there  on  the  road  up 
to  Verdun,  I  thought  of  those  two  and  of  their 

[119] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

tales  of  the  roads,  and  of  their  pride  in  me,  could 
they  have  seen  me;  and  I  would  say,  'This  is  the 
road  to  Metz,  one  must  look  beyond/  When  all 
the  world  spoke  of  Verdun  I  looked  beyond.  I 
remembered  that  this  also  was  the  road  to 
Metz." 

He  stopped,  and  we  stepped  close  in  under  the 
wall  as  a  column  of  ponderous  hooded  motor 
lorries  went  through  the  village  and  over  the 
ridge.  The  Frenchman  watched  them  with  a 
kindling  eye  until  the  last  had  gone,  then  he 
turned  to  me  and  smiled,  brushing  the  rain  from 
his  beard. 

"Monsieur  will  understand,"  he  said,  "why  I 
am  a  lover  of  roads." 


[120] 


THE  SPRING  RIVER 

FOR  more  than  a  week  the  mill  at  the  weir  had 
stood  idle,  cut  off  from  the  stream.  The 
river  was  moving  too  full  and  strong  for  its  old 
joints.  It  was  at  the  level  of  the  fields,  the  beds 
of  reeds  were  hidden;  the  willow  trees  dipped 
deep  in  its  flood;  the  middle  of  its  course  was 
marked  continually  with  ragged  drifts  of  foam, 
and  its  waters  fell  across  the  weir  with  the  long 
vibrating  sound  of  the  distant  sea.  They  fell, 
smoothly,  unhurriedly,  in  a  strong  clean  curve  as 
of  steel;  and  then  at  the  bottom  they  broke  into 
water  again  and  their  foam  rose,  like  little  angry 
heads,  and  hit  back  hurriedly  at  the  weir. 

In  that  full  smooth  curve  of  water  there  was  a 
spell — not  the  evil  spell  that  the  hurrying 
unending  movement  of  water,  always  changing 
and  always  the  same  can  sometimes  put  on  the 
senses  of  men,  luring  their  minds  away  until  it 
draws  them  down  into  it  to  their  destruction — 
but  the  good  spell  of  a  thing  that  holds  the  senses 
and  mind  together.  It  was  the  double  spell  of  a 

[till 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

thing  living  and  moving  and  yet  at  the  same  time 
fixed  in  a  beautiful  shape.  That  curve  of  water 
was  as  full  and  complete  and  unchanging  as  a 
great  curve  of  the  green  Downs,  or  the  line  of  a 
statue,  but  it  moved  more  quickly  than  the  eye 
could  follow. 

The  spring  flood  of  the  river  is  not  so  beautiful 
nor  so  mysterious  as  the  autumn  flood.  In  the 
still  autumn  the  river  is  a  mirror  of  lovely  things. 
It  is  deep-bosomed  and  the  colour  of  old  silver. 
It  flows  slowly,  so  brimming  full  that  its  centre 
seems  higher  than  its  low  banks.  Its  willows  are 
turned  to  gold;  the  green  beeches  carry  golden 
crests,  and  everything — trees  and  fields,  hedges 
and  reeds,  all  the  rich  and  coloured  ripeness  of 
autumn — is  thrown  into  its  waters  with  not  a  line 
broken  nor  a  colour  dimmed.  At  every  bend  of 
its  winding  course  its  banks  meet  in  the  reflection. 
You  seem  to  pass  not  along  your  familiar  river, 
but  from  pool  to  hidden  pool ;  and  as  you  enter 
each  your  way  closes  mysteriously  behind. 

But  this  spring  flood  was  a  hurrying  of  brown 
and  naked  waters  in  a  brown  world.  Everything 
was  brown,  from  the  earth-stained  river  to  the 
ploughed  fields  deep  coloured  with  the  rains,  and 
the  branches  of  the  high  trees.  It  was  the  last 
brown  look  of  the  world  before  the  green  came. 

[122] 


THE  SPRING  RIVER 

The  winds  had  driven  the  mists  away  into  the  far 
distance,  and  in  their  place  was  the  pale  and 
wandering  sunlight  of  spring,  coming,  going,  and 
coming  again,  as  the  wind  blew 

To  the  bare  brown  branches  of  the  hedges  a  few 
briar  leaves  still  clung,  yellow  as  parchment  and 
crimson  rimmed,  the  last  forgotten  flags  still 
flying  for  the  old  year,  dead  three  months  before. 
But  in  their  sheltered  under-hollows  the  green 
was  already  coming,  and  all  along  the  river  banks 
the  bare  willow  branches  were  like  soft  brown 
mists  with  a  green  shadow  lurking  in  them. 

Across  that  brown  world  the  wind  galloped, 
carrying  clouds  and  sunshine  with  it.  The 
clouds,  as  they  passed,  turned  their  black  faces 
to  the  earth  and  threw  back  a  winter  darkness 
into  the  empty  branches  of  the  trees,  and  the 
wandering  sunshine  lit  on  those  green  shadows 
as  they  waited  for  their  time. 

But  for  the  moment  the  world  belonged  to  the 
hurrying  river.  Its  banks  and  its  trees  no  longer 
hid  it.  One  could  see  it  far  across  the  fields.  In 
the  distance  were  curves  and  long  reaches  which 
no  one  seemed  to  have  known  to  be  there.  In 
some  places  it  flowed  high  and  clear,  in  others  it 
was  a  brown  mist.  In  others,  it  had  poured  out, 
filled  a  field  with  silver  and  then  hurried  on.  In 

[123] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

a  little  it  would  sink  and  sink  again  beneath  the 
red  sand  and  deep  green  eaves  of  its  banks,  and 
the  reeds  would  spring  up,  and  the  willows  and 
the  grasses  bend  over  to  hide  its  waters;  and  it 
would  flow  on,  easy  and  unconcerned,  and  care 
nothing  whether  it  was  seen  or  hidden. 

But  now  it  was  in  front  of  all  the  other  things 
of  the  world.  The  rains  had  brought  the  new  life 
to  it,  while  they  still  waited.  It  would  be  seen. 
And  every  little  stream  and  every  ditch  had  the 
same  ambition.  They  too  were  swollen  with 
importance  and  sudden  waters.  For  a  little  time 
they  too  were  rivers.  They  had  lain  muddy  and 
stagnant.  Leaves  and  branches  and  all  the  dead 
things  of  the  banks  had  fallen  into  them,  and 
stayed  there  rotting.  Their  waters  had  grown 
tainted,  with  no  power  to  cover  the  dead  things 
or  to  sweep  them  away.  And  then  the  rains 
came,  and  they  were  full  of  fierce  and  living 
waters.  They  had  at  last  the  power  to  move,  a 
current  that  could  beat  on  the  banks  and  strike 
up  a  song.  So  they  went,  lapping  against  the 
drain  pipes,  as  the  rivers  lap  round  their  bridges, 
sweeping  in  sudden  musical  rushes  against  the 
submerged  twigs,  whirling  in  gay  eddies  and 
little  dancing  hollows  of  water.  To  them  also 
this  sudden  life  had  come  while  the  rest  of  the 

[124] 


THE  SPRING  RIVER 

world  still  waited.  It  was  as  short  as  a  gnat's 
life,  but  as  gay.  These  ditches  were  the  dancing, 
singing  insects  of  this  time  when  the  world  waited 
for  spring.  In  a  very  little  while  the  waters  that 
filled  them  would  have  gone  as  suddenly  as  they 
had  come.  They  would  dry  in  the  heat  and  be 
still  again,  and  the  living  gnats  would  dance 
above  them  in  the  sunshine 

When  the  half  gods  go 
The  gods  arrive. 

But  for  this  little  while  it  was  they  that  lived, 
and  danced,  and  sung. 


THE  COUNTRY  'BUS 

IT  was  on  this  day,  a  warm  day  in  July,  that  I 
swore  to  abjure  from  that  time  forward  all 
such  phrases  as  steam-power,  petrol-power,  and 
electric-power,  as  phrases  made  by  a  mechanical 
age  to  its  false  glorification,  as  phrases  misusing 
a  great  word,  and  harmful  to  whatever  is  beauti- 
ful and  truthful  in  our  speech. 

Consider  the  things  that  we  burn  to  serve  our 
different  ends.  Of  them  all  wood  is  the  greatest. 
It  is  the  oldest,  by  some  thousands  of  years,  the 
most  kindly  and  the  most  beautiful ;  and  men  by 
burning  it  have  done  wonderful  things.  It  was 
by  wood,  when  they  first  set  light  to  it,  that  they 
first  raised  themselves  a  little  above  the  beasts — 
there  was  power  indeed! — and  to  this  day  the 
smell  and  sound  of  a  wood  fire  fill  men  with  a 
happiness  which  they  cannot  explain.  Yet  no 
one  has  ever  spoken  of  wood-power.  Men  have 
called  it  a  fuel  from  the  beginning  to  this  day. 
Why  should  petrol  have  a  greater  name  ?  Let  us 
keep  that  word  "  power"  for  the  things  that  move 

[127] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

the  souls  of  men,  and  call  a  fuel  a  fuel  however 
fast  we  may  travel  by  it.  Some  day,  when  the 
world  is  cured  of  our  particular  follies,  a  wise 
critic  will  put  his  finger  on  that  word  "power," 
and  explain  our  age  by  it,  pointing  out  how  we 
gave  it  to  all  the  wrong  things. 

Having  talked  of  these  false  powers  like  the 
rest,  I  saw  suddenly  the  folly  and  the  vulgarity 
and  the  falsehood  of  it  on  this  afternoon  in  July, 
standing  by  the  main  road  from  Salisbury  to 
Blandford  which  goes  by  way  of  Tarrant  Hinton, 
leaving  Tollard  Royal  on  the  right  and  on  the 
left  Gussage  St.  Michael,  Gussage  All  Saints,  and 
Wimborne  St.  Giles,  places  which  I  have  never 
seen,  but  whose  names  upon  the  map  enrich  the 
countryside.  We  had  gone  down  by  the  side  of  a 
British  village,  under  the  crest  of  the  Downs  on 
their  southern  slope,  where  now  only  wild  thorns 
grow,  and  by  the  chase  where  the  deer-stealers 
used  to  lie  hid  in  the  trees,  and  across  a  field 
which  of  all  the  English  fields  I  have  ever  seen 
did  most  deserve  that  phrase  "painted  with 
delight."  Its  rich  and  ancient  turf,  that  can 
never  have  known  the  plough,  blossomed,  like 
triumphant  youth,  with  thyme  and  trefoil  and 
rock  roses,  and  its  wild  strawberries  were  in  full 
fruit.  Purple  and  orange,  blood-red  and  the  pale 

[128] 


THE  COUNTRY  'BUS 

gold  of  the  stars — it  was  painted  these  colours 
across  four  splendid  acres  of  delight. 

At  the  bottom  of  the  field  was  a  causeway, 
which  once  had  carried  a  Roman  road.  There  it 
was,  clear,  solid,  not  to  be  mistaken,  raised  a  foot 
or  perhaps  two,  above  the  fields.  The  turf  now 
covered  it  and  the  rabbits  burrowed  in  its  sides, 
nor  had  anyone  marched  by  it  for  many  hun- 
dreds of  years,  yet  in  its  age  and  decay  it  was 
still  masterful.  For  among  that  open  turf,  with- 
out tree  or  hedge,  one  stood  upon  it — and  how 
much  more  would  not  one  have  marched  along 
it  ? — as  if  one  were  high  above  the  surrounding 
country  and  commanded  it  all. 

Beside  it  ran  the  modern  road,  smooth  and 
beautifully  clean,  powdered  with  fine  white 
stones  that  glittered  a  little  in  the  sun,  showing 
no  mark  of  the  rare  traffic  which  travelled  by  it, 
pressing  a  few  inches  below  the  level  of  the  turf 
on  either  side.  It  looked  like  a  carpet  which, 
that  very  morning,  had  been  laid,  fresh  and  new, 
across  the  fields,  and  by  evening  would  be  rolled 
up  again  and  carried  away,  leaving  the  grasses 
beneath  it  to  raise  their  heads  in  the  dews  of 
night,  and  the  ghosts  to  travel  by  that  ancient 
causeway  of  a  thousand  years. 

To  us  in  that  contented  mellow  time  of  mid- 
[129] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

afternoon,  as  we  stood  between  the  two  roads, 
feeling  the  influences  which  lived  mysteriously  in 
that  old  turf,  came  the  country  bus,  lifting  slowly 
over  the  full  curve  of  the  white  road.  It  was 
driven — let  it  be  said  for  the  last  time — by  petrol 
power.  But  what  power  had  petrol  over  it? 
Upon  its  high  roof,  set  round  with  a  small  iron 
rail,  its  passengers  stiffly  sat  on  stools.  Their 
multitudinous  parcels — for  it  was  market  day — 
lay  round  their  feet,  and  the  ladder  by  which  they 
had  climbed  was  strapped  to  the  bus's  side.  Up 
the  short  and  easy  hill  it  came,  at  a  staid  four,  or 
it  may  have  been  five,  miles  an  hour,  and  we 
laughed  aloud  with  delight  to  see  it,  for  it  had 
an  air  that  is  not  to  be  described  of  rustic 
and  ancient  things.  It  was  a  revelation  of  the 
enduring  spirit  triumphant  over  all  material 
change. 

Along  the  road  there  came  a  puff  of  dust  to- 
wards it,  and  a  motor  bicycle  went  by.  In  that 
magic  moment  there  would  have  been  no  sur- 
prise if  the  bicycle  had  suddenly  stopped  and  a 
masked  figure  in  its  saddle  held  up  the  driver  of 
the  bus  with  a  pistol.  Had  the  bus  itself  come 
rolling  and  rumbling  along  the  Roman  causeway 
instead  of  the  modern  road,  it  would  have  seemed 
more  natural.  It  was  as  if  petrol  power — the 

[130] 


THE  COUNTRY  'BUS 

phrase  shall  be  used  no  more — instead  of  sweep- 
ing us  onward  into  a  glorious  future  of  liquid  and 
electric  fuels,  had  suddenly  gone  all  astray  and 
carried  us  into  past  centuries.  Tom  Jones  might 
have  hailed  that  bus  from  the  roadside,  as  he 
journeyed  from  Gloucester  to  London,  and  never 
noticed  that  no  horses  drew  it.  Mr.  Wardle 
might  have  entertained  luncheon  party  after 
luncheon  party  on  its  roof  and  never  realised 
that  he  sat  above  an  internal  combustion  engine. 
For  in  that  motor  bus  still  travelled  the  spirit  of 
all  country  coaches  as  it  must  have  been  since 
roads  were  first  made  and  wheels  to  run  upon 
them;  and  neither  steam  nor  petrol  nor  any 
such  thing  has  had  or  ever  can  have  any  power 
over  it. 

Someday  airplanes  will  have  taken  the  place 
of  all  the  buses,  but  still  that  indomitable  spirit 
of  the  country  road  will  travel  on  whatever 
machine  shall  fly  from  Salisbury  to  Blandford, 
going  by  way  of  Tarrant  Hinton,  and  leaving 
Tollard  Royal  on  the  right  and  on  the  left  Gus- 
sage  St.  Michael,  Gussage  All  Saints,  and  Wim- 
borne  St.  Giles 

I  can  see  it.  It  will  be  such  an  ancient,  comic, 
rustic  thing,  lumbering  above  the  road,  that  still 
Tom  Jones  might  hail  it  without  surprise,  or 

[131] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

Mr.  Wardle  unpack  pigeon  pie  and  lobsters  sit- 
ting on  its  wings. 


Turning  we  went  back  across  the  Roman  road, 
where  already  the  rabbits  were  sitting  at  their 
ease  in  the  evening  sun.  We  went  solemnly  and 
with  a  strange  content.  When  the  bus  had 
crossed  the  hill  and  we  had  laughed  at  it,  we  felt 
as  if,  in  that  brief  moment,  we  had  slipped  from 
the  power  of  time  and  seen  the  borderlands  be- 
yond. For  what,  after  all,  can  Eternity  be,  if  it 
is  not  to  have  all  the  new  things  without  losing 
or  changing  any  of  the  old  ? 


[132! 


THE  ENCHANTED  FOREST 

HPO  Keats  it  was  full  of  fruits  and  paths  and 
*  ferns,  and  rushes  and  ivy  banks;  and  to 
Coleridge  it  was  of  cedar  trees;  and  to  Shake- 
speare of  oak  and  thorn  and  elm  and  all  the 
flowers  of  English  field  and  hedge,  and  Midsum- 
mer in  it  came  in  May;  and  to  Lucian  it  was  of 
pines  and  cypresses  growing  out  of  the  sea,  and 
his  ship  sailed  over  its  leafy  tops;  and  to  Virgil 
it  was  of  pines  and  great  holm  oaks  and  there  he 
found  the  enchanted  golden  bough,  growing  on 
an  oak  tree  like  the  mistletoe ;  and  to  the  Brothers 
Grimm  it  was  full  of  quaint  and  homely  things 
like  the  tree  that  opened  with  a  golden  key  and 
had  a  basin  of  bread  and  milk  inside — though 
what  the  tree  was  they  do  not  say;  and  to  Hans 
Andersen  it  stood  high  above  the  sea,  and  the  old 
oak  tree  in  it  dreamed  dreams. 

Such  a  forest,  so  wonderful  and  so  diverse,  to 
be  recognised  by  so  many  different  things,  cannot 
be  hard  to  find,  and  many  times  we  two  thought 
that  we  had  reached  its  borderland  or  were  on  a 

[i33l 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

road  that  would  lead  us  to  it.  Once  it  was  in  a 
little  wood  of  dead  fir  trees  standing  forlorn  on 
the  open  Downs  with  the  trees  so  close  together 
that  one  could  scarcely  go  into  it ;  and  within  it 
was  as  dark  and  still  as  a  shuttered  room.  Once 
it  was  in  a  wanton  and  beautiful  lane  which 
started  from  nowhere  on  the  side  of  Windover 
Hill,  and  was  so  deep  in  tall  grasses  and  so  roofed 
and  arched  with  bushes  that  it  was  less  like  a 
road  than  a  twisting  green  pipe,  leading  down 
and  down  until  we  thought  that  it  must  take  us 
at  last  into  the  very  heart  of  ancient  forests, 
into 

Gloomy  shades,  sequestered  deep, 
Where  no  man  went. 

But  instead  it  brought  us  out  to  a  plain  high 
road.  And  many  times  we  thought  we  must  be 
near  it  when  we  were  walking  on  the  Downs 
where  the  great  trees  have  come  up  from  the 
weald,  and  stand  along  each  side  of  the  old  turf 
road,  so  that  you  look  always  downwards  into 
the  woods,  among  the  olive  trunks  of  the  beeches 
where  the  air  is  like  still  green  water,  and  down 
long  low  aisles  of  hazel  bushes  with  little  un- 
coloured  Gothic  windows  at  the  end.  But  the 
enchanted  forest  was  among  none  of  these. 

[1341 


THE  ENCHANTED  FOREST 

Then  one  hot  day  in  summer  when  the  road- 
side hedges  were  grey  with  dust,  and  the  air  was 
shimmering,  and  the  chalk  track  up  the  Downs 
was  more  dazzling  in  the  sun  than  snow,  we 
climbed  from  the  weald  until  at  last  we  saw  the 
sea,  not  cool  and  green  and  full  of  delight  but  like 
a  great  grey  plain  with  a  hard  glitter  of  gold 
under  the  sun.  So,  longing  for  coolness  and  for 
rest,  we  threw  ourselves  down  on  the  turf  where  a 
little  wind  moved,  and  lost  all  the  world  but  the 
grass  heads  nodding  above  our  faces  and  above 
them  the  sky.  In  that  place,  where  the  nearest 
tree  was  miles  away  and  the  tallest  bush  was  no 
taller  than  a  man,  I  found  the  enchanted  forest. 

The  sun  was  hot  on  my  eyelids,  and  I  turned 
over  to  escape  it,  pressing  my  face  deep  down  to 
the  grass  roots  where,  even  on  this  hot  day,  the 
sun's  rays  had  not  pierced  and  there  lingered 
still  an  odorous  dampness.  The  grasses  seemed 
to  rise  enormously  above  me,  standing  against 
the  sky.  In  that  drowsy  dreaming  heat,  all  of 
my  body  beyond  my  shoulder  was  asleep  and 
forgotten.  I  lived  only  in  one  ear,  pressed  deep 
into  the  sweet  moist  turf,  listening  to  the  little 
sounds  that  ran  softly  through  it,  and  one  eye 
beneath  a  flickering  lid  that  peered  through  the 
undergrowth.  I  was  sunk  deep  in  this  little 

[i35l 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

forest  where  the  ants  and  spiders  can  find  shade, 
looking  up  at  the  slender  grass  stems  which 
seemed  so  tall  that  only  those  with  wings  could 
ever  reach  their  nodding  heads. 

It  was  an  ant  that  I  saw  first,  travelling 
through  the  forest  with  a  load  as  large  as  herself, 
toiling  up  and  down  over  the  pathless,  terrible 
tangle  of  the  green  grass  blades.  It  was  like  a 
jungle  laced  across  and  across  with  creepers;  it 
was  like  that  enchanted  forest  in  a  Russian  fairy 
tale  which  grew  from  a  comb  so  that  the  witch 
was  caught  in  its  twisting  branches  and,  fight 
as  she  would,  could  not  go  on.  But  the  ant 
struggled  up  and  tumbled  down,  never  forsaking 
her  load,  sometimes  pushing  it  up  before  her, 
sometimes  moving  backwards  as  she  climbed, 
and  drawing  it  after  her.  I  seemed,  as  I  watched 
her  on  this  courageous  journey,  to  be  no  bigger 
than  she.  I  felt,  through  her,  the  awful  toils  of 
that  jungle  below  the  grass  stems.  High  above 
me  a  fly  sat  with  diamond  wings.  He  could  fly 
above  it  all ;  it  had  no  toils  for  him ;  and  on  an- 
other stem,  nearly  at  the  tufted  head,  sat  a  snail. 
The  slender  stem  bent  a  little  under  his  weight. 
As  I  looked  up  at  him  from  the  depths  below, 
where  I  stood  and  the  ant  struggled,  I  felt  for 
him  an  envy  and  an  admiration  such  as  I  had 

[136] 


THE  ENCHANTED  FOREST 

never  thought  before  that  a  snail  could  inspire. 
He  had  no  wings  to  carry  him  out  of  that  jungle. 
He  was  not  better  equipped  than  the  ant  and  I. 
He  had  nothing  but  a  firm  grip  and  a  determined 
heart,  and  there  was  he  at  the  top  of  the  highest 
tree,  far  above  the  undergrowth,  sitting  where 
the  winged  things  came. 

I  had  turned  towards  the  ant  again  in  her 
struggles  when  suddenly  there  came  a  flash  of 
darkness  on  us  two  below  as  if  a  cloud  had  passed 
above  the  forest,  and  I  looked  up  to  see  that  a 
butterfly  had  settled  on  a  grass's  head  near  the 
snail.  That  moment's  darkness  was  thrown  by 
her  wings  before  she  closed  them.  Away  beyond 
her  was  a  great  scarlet  circle  like  the  setting  of 
some  monstrous  sun  above  the  tree  tops. 

All  was  still  for  a  time  in  that  enchanted  place. 
The  butterfly  and  the  snail  and  the  fly  sat  on 
their  tree  tops.  The  ant  had  dropped  her  burden 
and  returned  for  it.  The  undergrowth  was  full  of 
the  wet  sweet  smell  of  earth  and  of  grass.  Then, 
far  away,  beyond  the  great  red  sun  and  the  edges 
of  the  world,  came  a  strange  shrill  song,  louder 
than  all  the  winds.  It  lasted  for  a  long  time  ris- 
ing and  falling,  and  at  last  it  ceased — to  be 
followed  by  a  more  terrible  thing,  for  through  the 
forest  came  a  great  green  creature,  not  climbing 

[1371 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

over  its  undergrowth,  as  the  ant  climbed,  nor 
trampling  it  down  as  it  walked,  but  in  enormous 
leaps  that  lifted  it  over  glade  and  thicket  and  the 
high  tree  tops.  Its  last  leap  carried  it  right  across 
the  face  of  the  red  sun,  and  it  looked  as  if  it  were 
passing  clean  out  of  the  forest  into  the  sky,  but  it 
came  to  earth,  crouching  on  the  tangled  under- 
growth, and  the  song  burst  out  again  filling  all 
the  forest  with  its  noise. 

Then  the  song  stopped — suddenly  stopped,  but 
the  great  green  thing  still  crouched,  and  in  the 
awesome  sinister  silence  which  followed  that 
song  I  started,  and  sat  up. 

I  was  in  my  own  world  again.  It  was  there 
unaltered,  as  when  I  had  lain  down,  and  all 
around  was  the  curving  sunlit  turf. 

I  looked  down  at  the  turf  where  I  sat.  A  single 
poppy  was  growing  just  within  reach  of  my  hand, 
and  I  saw  a  tiny  snail  at  the  top  of  a  stem  of 
grass.  As  I  looked  a  grasshopper  jumped  before 
me  and  disappeared. 

Away  to  the  southwards  was  the  grey  sea,  and 
northwards  were  the  dark  woods  of  the  weald.  I 
thought  of  them  as  they  might  be,  in  monstrous 
dreams,  with  an  undergrowth  so  tangled  and 
thick  that  no  man  could  force  his  way  through 
it;  with  birds  as  large  as  clouds  settling  on  their 

[138! 


THE  ENCHANTED  FOREST 

branches,  with  strange  creatures  in  shells  slowly 
climbing  their  trunks;  with  enormous  green 
dragons  leaping  through  them  higher  than  their 
tree  tops,  and  singing  terrible  triumphant  songs 
that  shook  them  as  if  they  had  been  reeds. 


THE  FISHERMEN  OF  AMBERLEY 

their  craft  I  know  nothing,  nor  of  its 
pleasures.  There  have  been  fishermen  in 
the  family  but  I  am  not  of  these.  I  understand 
the  delights  of  walking  and  sleeping  in  the  open 
air,  but  of  that  subtle,  and,  as  I  can  well  believe 
it  to  be,  that  delectable  state  between  the  two 
extremes  in  which  fishermen  seem  to  live,  I  know 
nothing.  I  have  no  right  to  speak  of  them  at  all, 
except  that  I  love  them.  I  love  them  as  I  love 
the  windmills,  and  the  little  solitary  trees  on  the 
Downs,  and  the  cows  in  the  fields  and  the  golden 
ricks.  I  love  them  as  part  of  the  landscape. 
They  are  not  so  beautiful  as  the  willows,  which, 
like  them,  dip  delicate  branches  into  the  stream, 
but,  like  the  willows,  they  breathe  that  perfect 
content  of  slow,  silver  streams  and  water  mead- 
ows where  the  cattle  feed  and  the  gentle  twilight 
of  summer  evening.  There  they  sit.  .  .  . 
They  are  common  men  as  I.  They  are  dressed  as 
I.  If  I  met  them  in  the  streets  of  London  I 
might  sometimes  think  them  stout  and  unlovely, 

[141] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

but  now  they  are  changed.  It  is  as  if  that  line 
which  they  hold  above  the  stream  were  some 
fairy  root  by  which  they  were  planted  at  the 
river's  side,  drawing  up  through  it  the  still  con- 
tentment of  the  grasses  and  the  flowers. 

We  used  to  meet  them  on  Sunday  mornings  on 
the  Fishermen's  Train  to  Amberley  which 
started  when  London  had  scarcely  begun  to 
wake,  and  the  early  stillness  of  Victoria  was  un- 
disturbed except  by  the  gathering  of  these  men 
from  their  many  homes,  each  setting  out  for  the 
meadows  of  the  Arun  with  his  rod  in  its  case  and 
at  his  side  his  great  basket,  of  which  I  have  never 
been  able  to  determine,  either  going  or  returning, 
whether  it  was  full  or  empty.  We  alone,  carrying 
walking-sticks,  were  not  of  the  brotherhood. 

From  the  Station  of  Amberley  we  would  pour 
out  with  them  into  the  road,  a  little  crowd  all 
bristling  with  fishing  rods,  like  a  dock-side  with 
masts.  And  then,  in  a  moment,  we  would  be 
alone.  They  had  turned  suddenly  downwards 
and  we  had  turned  up — up  beneath  a  great  hedge 
of  privet,  hazel,  and  clematis,  walking  on  turf  that 
was  all  purple  with  thyme,  and  giving  thanks 
that  so  few  men,  even  when  they  are  not  fisher- 
men, will  go  up  hill  when  they  can  go  down. 
Giving  thanks  I  say — for  fishermen  are  still  only 

[142] 


THE  FISHERMEN  OF  AMBERLEY 

men  until  they  are  dispersed  along  their  river 
bank,  immobile,  contented,  rooted  deep  in  the 
stream.  That  path  would  take  us  up  until,  far 
away,  we  could  feel  that  dim  emptiness  which 
was  the  sea,  and  behind  us  was  sombre  Parham 
wood  with  its  long  grey  house,  half  hidden,  and 
its  lake  which  seemed  on  the  edge  of  brimming 
over,  and  beyond  it  the  grey  towers  of  Amberley, 
and  one  curve  of  the  Arun  gleaming  among  the 
meadows  where,  unseen,  the  fishermen  now  sat. 

So  in  solitude  we  went  all  day,  by  open  turf 
and  twisted  thorn,  until  at  evening  we  would  find 
a  road,  and  turn  again  towards  Amberley,  the 
chill  east  and  the  coming  of  night  behind  us, 
while  in  front  the  sunset  blazed  like  a  noble  fire 
lit  to  welcome  the  gods  as  they  came  home,  and 
the  meadows  of  Arun  were  a  great  plain  before 
us,  full  of  loneliness  and  enchantment. 

And  then,  at  the  last  turn  of  the  road  round  a 
shoulder  of  the  Downs,  we  would  see  below  us, 
not  gods  going  home,  but  all  the  fishermen. 
They  came,  climbing  up  very  slowly,  out  of  the 
deep  fields,  and  stepping  along  the  road,  and 
across  the  grey  four-spanned  bridge  of  Arun, 
with  such  an  air  of  ripe  leisure  and  contentment 
as  is  not  to  be  described.  Then  they  gathered 
round  the  door  of  the  Bridge  Inn.  Above  them 

[143] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

the  train  waited  in  the  station — their  train — as 
if  it  would  wait  on  until  the  last  and  slowest  of 
them  had  set  down  his  tankard  and  had  come. 

There  is  no  sight  in  the  world — not  cows  as 
they  go  in  to  milking,  nor  the  smoke  of  cottages 
rising  in  the  quiet  air  at  dusk,  nor  children  sleep- 
ing when  they  are  tired  with  happiness,  nor  men 
at  ease  with  their  pipes  when  they  have  eaten 
at  the  end  of  a  hard  day — no  sight  so  full  of  the 
ease  of  this  world,  of  bodies  satisfied  and  minds 
at  peace,  as  that  slow  ingathering  of  the  fisher- 
men of  Amberley  on  a  summer  evening. 


[i44 


THE  MAGICIAN  OF  THE  HILLS 

^  I  'HE  rain  had  begun  again  before  we  left  the 
*  road  with  its  low  walls  of  grey  stone.  By 
the  time  that  we  had  crossed  the  first  field  and 
reached  the  stream  which  we  meant  to  follow 
up  the  valley,  it  was  falling  with  a  steadily 
increasing  stroke.  We  pushed  on.  The  hills 
stood  high  about  us.  The  valley  was  deep  and 
sheltered.  Its  heavy  wet  grass  pressed  against 
our  knees  as  we  moved  toilsomely  through  it, 
and  the  clumps  of  heather  shook  the  water  over 
our  feet.  The  disappearing  hills  and  the  still  air 
itself  seemed  to  be  turning  to  grey  water.  We 
no  longer  felt  the  rain  as  a  separate  thing.  A 
wet  and  breathless  heat  wrapped  us  about. 
We  panted  for  dry  cool  air,  and  the  only  good 
thing,  in  all  that  clammy  prison  where  we 
struggled,  was  the  stream.  Its  cool  and  tum- 
bling brown  water  seemed  altogether  different 
from  the  grey  rain  which  choked  us,  until  we 
almost  felt  that  we  should  breathe  again  if  only 
we  plunged  our  faces  into  its  pools. 

[  H5 1 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

We  struggled  on  for  two  hours,  leaving  the 
stream,  climbing  over  turf  that  was  covered  with 
broken  boulders,  and  ploughing  our  way  up  a 
little  path  of  screes.  So  at  last  we  came  to  the 
head  of  the  pass  where  great  rocks  stood  firm  in 
the  turf  and  the  moss ;  and  there  the  world  sud- 
denly and  splendidly  changed.  We  met  and 
knew  the  rain  again.  It  no  longer  wrapped  us 
round,  grey,  silent  and  stifling,  but  came  at  us 
with  quick  cold  strokes  that  stirred  us  like  a  song. 
For  the  wind  was  behind  it.  He  filled  us  with 
life. 

He  is  the  great  magician  of  the  hills.  Without 
him  that  day  had  been  nothing  but  the  blank, 
unchanging  wetness  of  the  sky  lying  on  a  dreary 
sodden  earth.  With  him,  blowing  his  unseen  life 
through  it  all,  the  sky  and  the  earth  were  magic- 
ally changed.  Everything  in  those  wet  hills  and 
the  clouds  above  them,  seemed,  as  he  passed, 
to  take  shape,  to  put  on  a  strange  half-human 
life,  to  move  as  if  it  came  from  some  other  world 
beyond  the  hills;  and  then,  as  the  wind  fell,  its 
life  went  out. 

We  crossed  the  pass,  and  climbed  by  a  broken 
path  up  the  side  of  the  valley  beyond.  Across 
it  we  could  see  the  rain  moving  along  the  face  of 
the  hill.  It  went  in  slender  shadowy  lines,  one  by 

[146] 


THE  MAGICIAN  OF  THE  HILLS 

one,  that  stopped  and  gathered  in  the  valley  end, 
hiding  the  pass  by  which  we  had  come.  They 
were  like  beautiful  half-formed  figures  of  night 
coming  out  of  the  clouds.  As  they  went  so 
statelily  by,  brushing  the  earth  and  turning  its 
colours  grey,  they  might  have  been  the  ghosts  of 
the  sunbeams. 

The  wind  blew,  and  the  ghosts  passed;  and 
other  and  stranger  forms  came  up  from  the 
valley — great  lazy  white  clouds  that  seemed  to 
fondle  the  hills  as  they  drifted  by  them ;  and  a  line 
of  black  cloud,  with  an  edge  straight  as  a  sword, 
and  in  its  darkness  a  glow  of  bronze,  a  cloud  like 
the  sinister,  half-formed  shape  of  an  invading 
army;  and  clouds  that  pushed  grotesque  heads 
across  the  hills,  like  monsters  coming  out  of  the 
fairy  tales  to  burn  whole  valleys  with  their 
breath. 

All  the  clouds  and  the  rain  and  the  great  bare 
hills  were  as  full  of  the  life  of  that  half-world 
which  lies  between  plants  and  men  as  are  the 
woods  and  the  streams  in  the  old  tales.  But 
when  the  wind  passed  their  life  went  out,  and  the 
clouds  and  the  rain  melted  once  more  into  dismal 
waters.  Then  he  returned,  gathering  all  the 
clouds  together,  and  the  grey  regiments  of  rain 
broke  out  of  them,  sweeping  across  the  hills, 

[147] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

while  we  bent  to  them,  pushing  sightless  through 
their  ranks. 

Even  the  little  plants  of  the  hillside  were 
changed  by  his  coming.  He  blew  through  them 
also  a  breath  from  a  fairy  world.  The  pale 
rushes  moved  beautifully  before  him  with  a  sud- 
den glitter  like  a  little  water  thrown  through  a 
sunbeam.  The  brown  tufts  of  grass  bent  stoical 
heads,  and  let  their  ragged  hairs  go  with  his 
blast,  like  patient  horses,  and  the  bracken  as  he 
shook  its  fronds  became  suddenly  human — a 
crowd  of  flustered  little  people,  rocking  and 
gesticulating  with  fear,  brandishing  arms  in 
comical  despair.  Then  the  wind  passed;  the 
crowd  had  gone,  and  in  its  place  were  still,  grace- 
ful ferns  gathering  rain-pearls  at  the  tops  of  their 
fronds. 

I  would  not  exchange  such  a  day — full  of  this 
strange  half-comical,  half-magical  life  of  the 
clouds  and  the  rain  and  the  hillside,  that  comes 
and  goes  with  the  wind  like  a  ripple  or  a  shadow — 
for  all  the  heat  and  colour  of  a  clear  sky,  and  the 
wide,  sun-dusty  view  of  distant  hills. 

But  suddenly — it  was  now  the  late  afternoon — 
the  sun  came  out.  At  his  touch  all  was  changed 
once  more,  and  we  with  the  rest.  We  came  back 
to  this  comfortable  earth.  We  felt  the  warmth, 

[148] 


THE  MAGICIAN  OF  THE  HILLS 

luxuriously,  for  we  had  been  wet  and  dried  again 
by  the  wind  three  or  four  times  that  day.  Our 
way  was  by  a  level  valley.  We  were  tired,  and 
yet  we  walked  in  an  ease  that,  for  the  moment, 
was  more  delightful  even  than  physical  rest.  The 
wind  had  gone,  taking  with  him  all  the  clouds. 
The  clear  hills  looked  down  very  friendlily.  The 
musical  noise  of  the  streams,  swelled  with  the 
rains,  rose  more  and  more  loudly  in  the  still  air. 
All  the  wild  magic  of  the  morning  had  passed, 
and  in  its  place  was  a  content  of  this  earth.  Our 
bodies  were  happy  in  their  weariness,  knowing  of 
the  rest  to  come.  Our  minds  dreamed  peacefully 
in  the  sun. 


i49l 


THE  ADVENTURERS 

T^KERE  were  two  of  them,  little  green  fellows, 
•*•  swinging  bravely  above  the  dust  of  the 
road.  Peering  close  we  could  see  that  each  hung 
on  a  silver  thread  which  seemed  attached  to 
nothing  but  the  grey  air  above.  One  hung  his 
full  length.  The  other  had  curled  himself  up. 
Sometimes  they  twirled  giddily.  Then  they 
would  drop  a  little,  but  neither  seemed  in  a  hurry 
to  descend.  They  swung  in  the  wind,  and  when 
it  came  with  a  stronger  puff  we  would  see  them 
for  a  moment  at  the  beginning  of  a  swift  upward 
curve  before  they  were  lost  against  the  green  of 
the  tree.  They  seemed  to  have  been  blown  into 
space  or  the  upper  leaves,  but  each  time  they 
reappeared,  hanging  tranquilly  above  the  road. 

Several  motor  bicycles  went  by  in  a  roar  and 
swirl  of  dust,  and  each  time  we  stepped  back 
feeling  sure  that  now  the  two  adventurers  had 
been  destroyed  or  had  been  whirled  away  on  a 
more  terrible  journey,  but  each  time,  as  the  dust 
settled,  we  found  them  still  secure  in  space. 

[151] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

They  and  their  invisible  ladders  were  charmed; 
nor  did  they  seem  in  the  least  disturbed  by  these 
devastating  interruptions.  They  took  it  all  in 
the  day's  journey,  as  they  spun  their  way  to  earth 
from  the  branches  of  the  oak.  It  is  a  bold  thing 
to  come  down  from  that  peaceful  green  world  into 
the  very  middle  of  a  main  road  on  a  summer 
afternoon,  but  no  doubt,  like  other  travellers, 
they  went  cheerfully,  being  ignorant  of  the 
dangers  about  them. 

As  they  came  nearer  to  earth  we  stood  close 
above  them,  and  the  one,  with  that  quickness  to 
seize  an  opportunity  which  we  admire  in  all  the 
great  adventurers,  immediately  made  himself 
secure  by  spinning  a  second  thread  from  my 
shoulder.  Thence  he  descended  to  earth.  The 
other  whirled  furiously  before  us,  as  the  wind 
caught  him,  swept  upwards  in  a  glorious  circle, 
and  then  descending,  came  to  rest  on  my  finger. 
He  waved  his  two  front  legs  languidly,  and  then 
sank  down,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  with  the  graceful 
exhaustion  of  the  trained  performer.  I  laid  him 
among  the  grasses  at  the  road  side.  The  other 
had  already  disappeared. 

One  does  not  commonly  think  of  the  cater- 
pillar as  a  graceful  thing  of  the  air.  He  is  a  pest, 
a  furious  eater.  But  when  one  comes  on  him 

[152] 


THE  ADVENTURERS 

suddenly  in  the  middle  of  so  splendid  and  peril- 
ous a  journey  one  forgives  him  for  some  of  the 
many  things  that  he  has  devoured.  He  may  have 
a  voracious  stomach,  but  he  has  also  his  spin- 
neret. When  you  think  of  the  leaves  that  he  has 
eaten  to  the  ribs  and  the  oak  trees  that  he  has 
devastated,  remember  also  this  silver  thread  by 
which  he  travels  through  space.  No  one  who  can 
set  out  on  such  a  journey  is  to  be  altogether 
hated  and  despised.  This  adventurer,  I  thought, 
must  somewhere  in  literature  be  celebrated  as 
something  more  than  a  mere  destroying  insect, 
and  I  went  in  search  of  whoever  had  written  of 
him  worthily.  First,  in  an  old  natural  history 
book  I  found,  not  a  piece  of  prose  but  at  least  a 
picture,  the  work  of  an  artist  whom  the  cater- 
pillar, poor  greedy  grub,  had  moved  to  feelings  of 
awe  and  even  fear.  It  was  an  old-fashioned  book, 
old  enough,  that  is,  to  be  illustrated  not  with 
diagrams  and  plates  but  with  real  pictures,  and 
this  picture  showed  the  processional  caterpillar 
on  the  march. 

It  was  night.  In  orderly  ranks  the  caterpillars 
descended  a  fir  tree  and  crossed  the  ground 
below.  Their  leader  marched  alone.  Behind 
him  was  a  rank  of  two ;  behind  these  were  three ; 
behind  these  again  four,  and  so  the  ranks  went  in 

[i53l 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

ascending  scale  until  they  were  lost  among  the 
branches  of  the  fir  tree.  They  advanced  like  an 
army,  and  the  last  touch  of  horror  was  given  to 
the  scene  by  a  dim  rabbit  in  the  background, 
flying  in  terror  beneath  a  shadowy  moon.  These 
processional  caterpillars  of  that  old  book  were 
very  different  from  their  pathetic,  yet  heroic, 
descendants  on  whom  M.  Fabre  made  his  un- 
kind experiments  with  the  flower  pot.  These, 
one  could  see,  would  have  swept  over  and  de- 
voured any  naturalist  so  presumptuous  as  to 
stand  across  their  path.  They  were  the  demi- 
gods and  giants  of  the  early  morning  of  the 
caterpillar  world,  for  by  an  imaginative  but  un- 
scrupulous use  of  perspective  the  artist  had  made 
them  appear  to  be  larger  than  the  rabbit.  It  was 
an  enchanting  picture — but  still  I  had  not  found 
either  the  prose  or  verse  for  which  I  sought. 

There  is  only  one  caterpillar  in  Hans  Andersen 
and  he  has  not  even  a  story  to  himself.  He 
makes  no  more  than  a  brief  appearance  in  the 
story  of  the  beetle,  as  a  modest  sentimental  crea- 
ture, a  foil  to  the  beetle's  conceit.  "  How  beauti- 
ful the  world  is,"  says  he,  "the  sun  is  so  warm 
and  everything  so  happy!  And  when  I  one  day 
fall  asleep  and  die,  as  they  call  it,  I  shall  awake 
as  a  butterfly."  But  surely  no  one  who  has  a 

[i54l 


THE  ADVENTURERS 

spinneret  inside  him  would  ever  dream  of  be- 
coming something  else. 

And  then  at  last,  I  found  an  old  pamphlet, 
very  roughly  printed,  with  the  date  1659.  It  had 
the  title  "The  Caterpillars  of  this  Nation, 
anatomised  in  brief  discovery  of  housebreakers, 
pickpockets,  etc.  With  the  life  of  a  penitent 
Highwayman."  Here,  thought  I,  was  the  cater- 
pillar not  unworthily  treated.  He  carries  his 
rope  within  him.  He  is  the  natural  associate  of 
the  daring  criminal  and  of  those  also  who  have 
made  heroic  escapes.  Casanova,  Cellini,  Baron 
Trenck  are  among  the  great  caterpillars  of 
history.  But  when  I  opened  the  pamphlet  I 
found  that  the  caterpillar,  after  all,  was  intro- 
duced only  on  account  of  his  destructive  appe- 
tite. Housebreakers  and  pickpockets,  said  the 
penitent  highwayman  (who  must  either  have 
been  a  hypocrite  or  an  invention  of  some  pious 
sentimental  journalist  of  the  Commonwealth), 
are  "  the  catterpillars  of  this  nation  which  do  eat 
into  men's  estates  and  lives." 

The  search  has  failed,  but  I  still  hope  that 
some  day,  when  I  am  not  looking,  I  shall  find  the 
poet  who  has  sung  of  this  adventurer  as  he  de- 
serves— of  him,  and  his  journeys,  and  his  silver 
rope. 

[i55l 


THE  VILLAGE  AT  THE  WORLD'S  END 

THE  road  to  the  village  at  the  world's  end 
turns  aside  from  a  valley  in  the  south  of 
England  just  before  this  valley  reaches  the  sea. 
It  is  cut  abruptly  into  the  side  of  the  Downs, 
and  rises  at  once  in  a  little  hill,  so  that  nothing  of 
it  is  to  be  seen  but  the  first  few  yards.  Nor, 
though  there  are  scarcely  any  roads  now  in  all 
the  south  of  England  without  their  sign-posts,  is 
there  any  sign  at  the  corner  of  this  road,  and  for 
that  reason  no  one  would  go  by  it  unless  he  liked 
the  look  of  the  road  or  because  he  wondered 
whither  it  went. 

One  follows  this  road,  expecting  nothing,  yet 
wondering  all  the  while  what  there  is  to  find,  and 
then,  where  the  heart  of  solitude  should  be,  one 
comes  to  the  village  at  the  world's  end. 

It  is  more  securely  hidden  than  if  it  were  in  the 
middle  of  a  forest  without  paths,  or  among  the 
deep,  unseen  folds  of  the  mountains,  for  it  is 
hidden  without  artifice.  It  lies  in  a  great  bowl  of 
the  Downs,  open  from  morning  until  evening  to 

[i57l 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

the  sun ;  and  because  it  is  hidden  without  artifice 
it  is  all  the  more  beautiful  to  have  found  it. 
Moreover  of  its  discovery  it  can  be  said  (as  of  few 
of  the  great  discoveries  of  life,  like  falling  in 
love,  or  learning  that  some  day  one  must  die) 
that  one  can  remember  the  exact  place  at  which 
the  discovery  was  made.  There  is  a  place  on 
that  road  (and  you  can  return  to  it)  at  which 
you  knew  nothing  of  this  village,  and  then,  be- 
fore another  breath  was  drawn,  had  found  it  all. 
At  that  place  you  look  at  it  at  about  the  level 
of  its  little  church  tower,  with  ivy  growing  all 
over  it  and  creeping  in  at  the  lips  of  the  wooden 
lattices  under  its  red  tiles.  It  has  few  houses  but 
many  trees,  all  gathered  together,  as  it  seems,  for 
companionship ;  and  so  near  and  so  modestly  do 
its  roofs  lie  at  your  feet  that  you  feel  you  could 
almost  step  across  them  to  the  Downs  at  the 
other  side.  These  things  about  it  are  delightful, 
but  you  do  not  know  at  first  that  this  is  indeed 
the  village  at  the  world's  end,  though  already  you 
can  see  that  the  road  which  you  have  followed, 
which  dips  from  your  feet  into  the  village  and 
rises  beyond  it,  ends  in  the  turf  just  below  the 
further  rim  of  the  Downs,  as  if  those  who  had 
made  it  knew  very  well  that  beyond  that  ridge 
was  no  place  to  which  it  could  go. 


THE  VILLAGE  AT  THE  WORLD'S  END 

You  do  not  know  at  first  that  this  is  the  village 
at  the  world's  end,  because  the  poets  have  not 
prepared  your  mind  to  find  it  as  it  is.  In  this 
village  are  no  magic  casements  opening  on  peril- 
ous seas;  nor  enchanted  woods  "haunted  by 
woman  wailing  for  her  demon  lover";  nor  such 
things  beyond  words  to  tell,  as  Kilmeny  found; 
nor  the  frozen  houses  of  Tong  Tong  Tarrup  on 
the  great  crag  looking  over  the  edge  of  the  world. 
Yet  any  one  of  the  poets  who  have  told  us  of 
these  things  might  have  been  very  well  content, 
when  he  came  to  the  world's  end,  to  find  such  a 
little  English  village  as  this. 

After  you  have  gone  down  into  the  village  and 
been  there  for  a  while  you  begin  to  understand, 
even  without  speaking  to  any  one  of  its  inhabit- 
ants, that  belief  which  is  theirs.  You  begin 
to  understand  it  as  you  look  up  on  every  side  at 
that  unbroken  rim  of  the  great  bowl  of  the  Downs 
in  which  the  village  lies.  It  does  not  tower  above 
it,  nor  menace  it,  nor  fling  at  it  clouds  and 
twisted  shadows  and  crooked  winds,  nor  play  the 
terrible  and  grotesque  as  mountains  do  to  the 
villages  at  their  feet.  But  it  surrounds  it  very 
gently,  and  closes  all  the  world  to  it. 

There  is  no  clock  in  the  church  tower.  Of  a 
clock  the  village  has  no  need.  Its  inhabitants 

[i59l 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

measure  the  morning  by  the  shadow  as  it  climbs 
and  disappears  over  the  eastern  rim  of  their 
great  bowl  of  the  Downs,  and  they  measure  the 
change  of  the  day  towards  evening  as  the  shadow 
returns,  coming  gently  as  a  friend,  down  the 
western  slope  of  sunlit  grass  until  it  touches  their 
houses.  Across  this  rim,  where  their  only  road 
ends,  they  watch  the  day  pass.  The  sea  mists 
roll  in  to  them  across  it  as  from  another  world, 
and  if  a  tall  man  were  to  stand  on  tiptoe  on  their 
church  tower  he  would  just  fail  to  look  over  it. 

By  day  the  gold  of  the  sun  makes  a  mist  above 
it,  but  when  the  day  has  burnt  out  behind  it  into 
a  few  grey  ashes  of  cloud  which  the  night  wind 
blows  away,  when  all  the  colours  have  faded  from 
its  grass  and  it  is  left  a  dark  line,  clear  and 
mournful  against  the  sky,  that  great  rim  of  the 
Downs  has  something  not  to  be  described  except 
that  it  is  final,  satisfying,  and  complete.  It  is 
then  that  you  both  understand  and  share  the 
simple  faith  of  those  who  live  in  this  village.  For 
while  we  believe  that  the  world  is  round  and  has 
no  end  at  all,  and  the  ancients  believed  that  it 
was  flat  and  that  its  end  was  the  swift  encircling 
stream  of  Oceanus,  their  faith  is  that  the  world  is 
a  great  bowl  and  no  man  may  climb  to  its  rim, 
but  if  you  stand  on  tiptoe  on  the  church  tower 

[160] 


THE  VILLAGE  AT  THE  WORLD'S  END 

you  can  nearly  see  over  it.  For  those  who  live 
in  this  serene  place  and  see  each  day  pass  across 
their  world  and  go  out  beyond  that  dark  horizon 
of  the  Downs  there  could  be  no  other  faith. 

One  thing  more  there  is  in  proof  that  the  men 
and  women  of  this  village  do  indeed  hold  this 
faith,  believing  that  here  the  world  ends  and  that 
by  their  road  no  travellers  will  come  on  their  way 
to  other  places.  And  this  one  thing  also  makes 
this  village — habitable  and  familiar  as  it  is — akin 
to  those  places  which  the  poets  discover  in  the 
borderlands  between  the  worlds.  Though  the 
poets  find  them  beautiful,  containing  those  things 
that  they  have  never  had  and  desire,  and  those 
things  also  that  once  they  had  in  this  world  and 
long  to  find  again,  yet  always  there  is  something 
that  is  remote,  scarcely  human,  and  that  chills 
the  heart.  So  also  is  it  with  this  village  at  the 
world's  end.  It  has  no  inn. 


[161 


WINDOWS 

THE  war  was  long  since  over,  but  Private  Steep 
still  lay  in  a  hospital  ward,  and  when  he 
talked  at  all  he  talked  of  the  war.  He  would  tell 
you  that  he  knew  men  who  had  not  been  able  to 
stand  it.  For  himself  he  was  glad  to  say  that  it 
had  not  troubled  his  nerves.  If  you  asked  him 
what  he  did  lying  there,  he  would  say  that  he  did 
not  do  much.  He  did  not  care  to  read,  and 
though  sometimes  people  would  offer  to  read  to 
him  he  found  it  difficult  to  listen.  The  sentences 
were  too  long.  He  was  very  well,  he  would  add, 
but  he  felt  tired.  The  war  had  been  rather  a 
tiring  job.  He  liked  best  to  lie  and  do  nothing, 
and  look  at  the  white  wall  opposite. 

It  was  then  that  he  was  moved  to  the  window. 
"Give  a  man  like  that  nothing  but  a  wall  to  look 
at  and  he'll  see  things  on  it,"  said  the  doctor; 
"he'll  see  all  the  things  that  he  ought  to  forget." 
But  by  the  window  he  still  lay  and  looked  at 
nothing,  or  at  whatever  else  it  was  that  his  mind 

[163] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

saw.  He  was  content  with  nothing.  That  was 
his  disease. 

He  had  been  by  the  window  a  week  or  more 
when  chance  brought  to  that  ward  a  great  parcel 
of  old  magazines,  gathered  from  the  tops  of  book- 
shelves and  cupboards.  They  were  only  ten  and 
fifteen  years  old,  but  they  seemed  more  ancient 
than  the  Flood,  and  the  patients  looked  curi- 
ously, as  into  another  world,  at  pictures  of  for- 
gotten events,  at  the  ascending  ages  of  celebrities 
whom  no  one  now  knew,  at  cartoons  of  un- 
remembered  controversies. 

Private  Steep  turned  them  over  without  inter- 
est. He  looked  at  the  pictures  with  a  dull  eye. 
He  was  too  tired  to  puzzle  out  the  jokes.  He 
gave  up  the  attempt.  And  then,  as  he  pushed 
them  away,  he  found  between  a  Punch  and  a 
Strand  Magazine,  a  book  of  coloured  pictures 
called  Medieval  Masters.  They  were  queer,  but 
that  did  not  trouble  him  like  the  queerness  of  the 
fashions  and  the  jokes  of  fifteen  years  ago.  For 
there  was  something  very  firm  and  clear  about 
them. 

It  was  at  their  brilliant  colours  that  he  looked 
first,  and  then  he  saw  with  satisfaction  that  he 
knew  at  once  what  each  thing  was.  He  had  never 
seen  such  chairs  and  cups,  strangely  shaped  and 

[164] 


WINDOWS 

carved,  but  he  knew  that  they  were  chairs  and 
cups.  Nor  had  he  ever  seen  such  women,  with 
their  long  white  fingers  and  wonderful  dresses. 

He  looked  through  that  book  and  not  until  it 
was  finished  did  he  remember  to  be  tired.  Two 
days  later  he  surprised  his  nurse  by  being  angry 
because  another  patient  had  the  book  when  he 
wanted  it.  He  had  not  troubled  before  to  be 
angry. 

He  was  content  at  first  to  look  at  the  bright- 
ness of  the  colours,  and  at  those  women  who 
were,  in  some  strange  way,  both  beautiful  and 
comic.  Then  he  began  to  look  into  the  pictures, 
at  the  carving  of  furniture,  and  the  embroidery 
of  dresses.  In  one  an  open  book  lay  on  a  cushion. 
He  could  see  the  drawings  in  the  book.  He  began 
to  go  round  those  pictures  like  a  child  examining 
a  new  room. 

It  was  then  that  he  noticed  a  picture  which 
seemed  to  him  very  odd.  It  was  called  "Ma- 
donna Enthroned  with  Angels/'  but  the  throne 
was  not  such  as  he  had  ever  imagined,  and,  most 
curious  of  all,  in  the  throne  was  a  window.  He 
looked  through  the  window  and  saw  trees,  very 
tall  trees  as  delicate  as  feathers;  he  saw  a  shore, 
where  a  man  was  running  down  towards  the 
quaintest  of  little  ships;  and  far  away  on  an 

[165] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

island  was  a  shadowy  blue  city,  a  city  that 
looked  as  if  it  had  risen  straight  from  the  sea. 

He  turned  through  the  book  again  and  found, 
what  he  had  not  noticed  before,  that  in  nearly 
every  one  of  the  pictures  was  a  window.  Even 
those  that  were  not  rooms  yet  had  their  windows, 
and  none  of  the  windows  was  empty.  Through 
one  he  looked  up  a  winding  valley  to  hills  as  blue 
as  the  sea,  and  through  another  at  a  little  town. 
Instead  of  looking  into  those  pictures  he  began 
now  to  look  out  of  them. 

It  was  the  window  with  the  little  town  that 
pleased  him  most.  For  it  was  a  window  in  a  real 
room,  a  room  with  a  tiled  floor,  and  a  three- 
cornered  chair,  and  a  carved  wooden  bench  where 
the  mother  sat  feeding  her  child.  The  window 
itself  was  very  small,  with  a  heavy  iron  studded 
frame  folded  back  from  it,  but  through  it  you 
saw  the  whole  town — houses,  and  people  walking 
in  the  square,  and  a  tall  church  tower,  and  behind 
it  a  road  that  crossed  the  hills.  It  was  all  ex- 
traordinarily small,  and  far  away,  but  as  clear 
as  a  summer's  day.  He  wished  that  he  could 
have  put  his  head  out  of  that  window  and  seen  a 
little  more,  but  it  was  wonderful  how  much  one 
could  see. 

He  had  long  since  lost  the  feeling  that  in  those 
[166] 


WINDOWS 

pictures  was  anything  odd.  The  women  re- 
mained beautiful,  but  they  no  longer  seemed 
comic.  It  was  right  that  in  gardens  and  in 
thrones  you  should  find  windows  looking  out  on 
other  worlds.  Then  one  day  he  suddenly  realised 
that  he  had  a  window  of  his  own  and  had  never 
looked  through  it;  and  when  he  came  to  look 
through  it  he  found,  what  was  still  more  strange, 
that  it  was  not  very  unlike  the  little  town 
through  the  window  of  the  picture.  He  looked 
down  a  slope  of  chimneys  and  roofs,  and  across 
them  to  another  slope  where  houses  stood,  and 
he  could  see  a  tall  brick  tower  with  a  clock.  He 
could  see  also  one  bend  of  a  road,  where  trams 
passed.  They  were  very  small  but  as  vivid  a  red 
as  the  wonderful  dress  of  the  woman  in  the 
picture. 

It  was  not  as  good  to  look  at  as  the  little  town. 
At  first  he  disliked  it  because  it  was  never  for 
two  days  the  same,  and  that  troubled  him.  But 
the  more  he  looked  at  it  the  more  his  interest 
in  it  grew.  Sometimes  in  the  sunlight  it  was 
almost  as  clear  as  the  town  in  the  picture,  but 
even  when  the  rains  drew  their  grey  brush  across 
it,  he  could  see  the  tower  with  its  clock,  and  the 
bend  of  the  road. 

At  last  he  began  to  feel  a  pleasure  in  its 
[167] 


WAYFARERS  IN  ARCADY 

changes,  and  to  watch  for  them — for  the  coming 
of  the  sun,  and  the  shadows,  and  the  rain,  that 
were  always  making  it  look  different  though  they 
left  it  always  the  same. 

However  much  he  looked  he  would  never  see 
more  of  the  little  town,  in  its  perpetual  clearness, 
nor  find  where  the  road  led,  that  crossed  the  hills. 
But  here  was  a  road  below  him,  and  one  day 
when  he  was  well  he  would  take  the  tram  along 
it  and  find  where  it  went. 

The  doctor's  notes  on  his  case  (which  were 
published  in  a  medical  journal  and  were  read 
with  interest  by  other  doctors)  described  the 
various  treatments  which  led  to  his  recovery. 
But  they  did  less  than  justice  to  the  book  of 
Mediceval  Masters.  Indeed  they  did  not  mention 
it  at  all  unless  it  was  included  in  the  phrase  "  a 
judicious  combination  of  psycho-therapy  and 
occupation."  What  they  did  not  say  was  that 
through  the  quaint  windows  of  those  pictures  he 
had  learnt  to  look  out  again  on  his  own  world. 


THE    END 


[168 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

AN  INITIAL  FINE  OP  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  5O  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


NOV  24  19; 


LD  21-100m-8,'34 


524209 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


